Let’s comprehensively review the Backup Bible, the Complete Edition, a 200-page eBook. The eBook starts with a common human tendency to think optimistically about systems running fine. Even though I got into this feeling, this server is fine and will work like that. But the fact of the matter is you can fail at any time. This is the first lesson you get from this book.
I have a real-world story to share here. We planned the ConfigMgr server DR/BCP plan for a bank in 2006. The IT team was optimistic that the DR/BCP exercise would work as intended. However, we never tested/proved these scenarios in the lab or pre-production environment. To test the BCP/DR scenario, people travelled from different parts to a BCP location. The BCP/DR test failed because ConfigMgr servers could not deliver the applications to users’ devices.
The eBook discusses the best practices for producing the design, which should include comprehensive coverage of catastrophic failures. While you can be optimistic about your DR plans, continuous review and testing of the DR/BCP plan are essential to avoid failures.
This eBook provides an end-to-end experience of the importance of planning and actions. The checklists provided for DR/BCP planning are helpful in real-world scenarios.
Table of Contents
Backup Bible – Review
Let’s give you the context about the Backup Bible project produced by Altaro and written by Microsoft MVP Eric Siron. The aim is to make a definitive guide to backup and disaster recovery for companies of all sizes. The Backup Bible Complete Edition is a great reference guide for all IT admins and anyone interested in protecting organizational data.
The Backup Bible Complete Edition has three parts. In my experience, planning disaster recovery is equally important as implementing DR plans.
- Getting Started with Disaster Recovery Planning.
- Backup Best Practices in Action.
- Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Blueprint
- The Backup Bible 1 The Complete Guide To Protect Your Data HTMD Blog (anoopcnair.com)
- Download The Backup Bible Part 2 Backup Best Practices In Action HTMD Blog (anoopcnair.com)
Negative Attitude & Risk
I’m sure most IT teams with a negative attitude towards disaster recovery planning and reviews might have struggled to deliver their services during the Covid. The ebook author, Eric, clearly mentioned the importance of a positive attitude towards the DR/BCP exercise.
The eBook covers an organization’s common risk factors. You can review the common risk factors and find additional ones for your organization. This exercise helps to improve the organization’s visibility of risk factors. The DR plan should cover mitigation plans for each risk factor.
I think the following free templates available with this eBook are useful for planning:
- Checklist for Meetings in the Planning Phase
- Key Stakeholders table
- Risk Identification template
- List of Common Risks
RTO, RPO, and Retention
I like Eric’s approach toward business planning related to DR and BCP design. It would help if you talked to different teams to define your organization’s appropriate RTO, RPO, and Retention policy objectives. As per the author, the following are the three pillars of the DR/BCP strategy.
- RTO – Recovery Time Objective
- RPO – Recovery Point Objective
- Retention
I felt the list of questions and examples the author wants you to ask team members to help you get the details you seek. Some of the sample questions are given below to give you an idea.
- How much does this system cost us per hour when offline?
- Corrupted data: RPO of 1 hour after corruption detection, using on-site hourly backups
- How long will the data have value?
Another important aspect highlighted in the book is finding the “fine” balance between shorter RTOs, RPOs, lengthier retention, and cost. This is one part of the critical decision-making process for a disaster recovery business plan.
Disaster Recovery – Technical Strategy
The author gives an end-to-end overview of technical strategy regarding disaster recovery plans. First, you must understand the organization’s technology echo system through the discovery phase. Fault-tolerant and high availability are the two pillars of disaster recovery technology strategy. With these two pillars, you already have a lot of DR design covered.
Eric discusses hard disk fault tolerance considerations such as RAID configuration in this book. The good part of this eBook is that the author shares his experience with the negative aspects of technical components. He tries to balance technical options with implementation and operational cost considerations for each design, which helps decision-makers plan DR strategies.
Well, he closes the planning section with two valuable documents:
- The Information Technology Department Checklist
- Data Protection Questionnaire
Backup Best Practices
Learn more about the best practices for a complete backup strategy. The second part of the Complete Backup Bible concentrates on implementing best practices.
You can get help from this part of this eBook to better understand the hardware and software selection process.
The author expands on the following three topics to provide a better experience in implementing the complete backup solution.
- Backup software
- Backup storage
- Security strategy
Software & Storage Selections
Most (large) organizations use an RFP process to select software and hardware vendors. In my experience, this is one of the best frameworks for assessing service capabilities. RFPs can also introduce an organization to high-quality vendor partners.
Eric explains the hardware and software vendor selection process in the fullest technical details in the Complete Edition Backup Bible eBook. He talks about:
- How to conduct in-depth software testing?
- Do we still need Magnetic tape backup?
- Is it better to use Optical media as a backup solution?
- Cloud Storage is an option for all types of data.
- Which is the fast and reliable backup solution?
Documentation and monitoring of backup systems should be in place as best practices. It’s also important to update the documentation regularly and follow security best practices. The author explains all these topics in eBooks.
Non-Technical Preparation Guidelines
Eric shifts gears in the third part of the eBook to get buy-in from business stakeholders. You might have a tremendous technical plan for backup/disaster recovery/business continuity. However, the pivotal part of all these is for departments to prepare themselves and maintain operational continuity.
Business leaders should consider non-technical topics and be ready to have operational continuity. This section of the book’s main takeaway is surviving, working through, and recovering from major and minor disasters that affect their departments, customers, and interactions with other businesses.
The following are some of the non-technical topics covered in the Complete Edition of the Backup Bible eBook that business leaders should consider.
- Personals
- Locations
- Equipment
- Safety
- Documentation
- Maintenance
- Other Items needed for operational continuity
Recovery Sites, Replication, and Cloud
The author also details the various recovery site options as part of recovery architecture and explains how to define a replication strategy based on the type of recovery site.
Before selecting the one recovery (secondary) site option, you must understand the business needs. The ongoing maintenance of secondary sites is also essential. He also explains the following types of recovery sites:
- Hot Secondary Sites
- Warm Secondary Sites
- Cold Secondary sites
Since the backup tape was first introduced, replicating data between the sites has changed disaster recovery more than anything else. Eric explains how replication between the sites is defined based on the recovery site selection.
Another important point the author highlights in this book is the difference between backup and replication. Do not replace Backup with Replication. Although backup and replication have similar features, you cannot use them interchangeably.
The book details the different types of replication and explains the selection process of replication design and cloud-based solutions, helping organizations make the best decisions.
- Synchronous Replication
- Asynchronous Replication
Testing is Essential
Well, regular testing of disaster recovery systems is essential. I do recommend performing the testing in a pre-production environment. It’s also necessary to schedule mock tests regularly to ensure everything works as expected.
Eric explained The following topics in chapter 18 to understand various test scenarios better.
- Test Backup data with restore operations
- Test Backup data with automated operations
- Test Copy data with the changes of geographically distributed clusters
- Test Replication
Conclusion
The BACKUP BIBLE—The complete guide to protecting your data—gives end-to-end coverage on Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plans for any business type. I like the non-technical and process-oriented thought process highlighted in the book. This helps to cover business operation scenarios very well.
The checklists, Key Stakeholders table, Risk Identification template, etc., provided in the appendix section of this guide answer many questions I get from the community.
- Do you have a template for this?
- Do you have a checklist for this?
The flow diagrams in the eBook are engaging elements. I like the book’s structure; it’s easy to understand. The cloud side of the thoughts is explained in the eBook, but I felt that there could be an opportunity to have a second edition of this book with a more cloud focus.
Download
Sure, it’s not the most exciting aspect of an IT administrator’s job, but having a reliable and secure backup and disaster recovery strategy could be the most important thing you do. Also, please check my quick notes about the Free 200 Pages eBook on Backup & Disaster Recovery | BCP.
What are you waiting for? Download your copy now!
Author
Anoop C Nair has been Microsoft MVP for 10 consecutive years from 2015 onwards. He is a Workplace Solution Architect with more than 22+ years of experience in Workplace technologies. He is a Blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group Community leader. His primary focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM and Intune. He writes about technologies like Intune, SCCM, Windows, Cloud PC, Windows, Entra, Microsoft Security, Career, etc.