Fire at the Firehouse!

A firehouse is a building or facility where fire trucks, equipment, and fire personnel are housed and maintained. It serves as the base of operations for a fire department and is typically staffed by firefighters who respond to emergency calls for fires, rescues, medical emergencies, and other incidents. Firehouses may also have training areas, sleeping quarters for on-call or shift-working firefighters, administrative offices, and community outreach facilities.

Firehouses are often designed with easy access to main roads to allow for quick departure when emergencies arise. In some places, "firehouse" may also refer to the fire station itself, which includes the crew, equipment, and the location from which fire engines and other vehicles are dispatched.

Thanks, ChatGPT! 

Ever wonder what happens when there is a fire AT the firehouse? 

For years, I sold data backup services. I sold the technology designed to prevent data loss. External Hard Drives. Cloud Storage. All of it. As in, what if your hard drive failed? What if you lost your laptop? What if your disk was hit with malware? We would talk about how companies that lost their data might not recover. A business that misses a billing cycle due to data loss can easily go bankrupt.  

Data backup refers to the process of creating copies of data or files and storing them in a secure location to prevent data loss in case of an unexpected event such as hardware failure, accidental deletion, cyberattacks (e.g., ransomware), or disasters like fires or floods. The backup copy allows users to restore their original data in the event of a loss.

Data backups are typically stored in different locations or formats to ensure redundancy. Common methods include:

External Storage Devices: Hard drives, USB flash drives, or network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

Cloud Storage: Online services that store data on remote servers, making it accessible from any device with internet access (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox, or dedicated backup services like Backblaze).

Offsite Backup: Storing backup data at a different physical location (in case of local disasters).

Automated Backup Systems: Many systems and software now offer automatic backups at regular intervals, reducing the risk of forgetting to backup data manually.

There are different types of data backup strategies:

Full Backup: A complete copy of all selected data.

Incremental Backup: Only new or changed data since the last backup is saved.

Differential Backup: All data changed since the last full backup is copied.

Regular backups are essential for data protection, as they ensure that users can recover important files in case of data loss. 

So, we were deep, deep, DEEP in the Data Backup Business for years. I even still own the domain MyBackupData.com  But over the last many years, with UCaaS and SaaS and everything moving to the cloud, the fear of data loss became less and less. The fear of 'what if my hard drive crashes' became less and less, over the years. 

We pay to have our websites backed up, at the server level, at our data center. Ah, but what happens when the data center itself crashes? What happens when there is a fire 'in the town' where the data center lives, and the Town Officials don't allow anyone into the data center? All the protections, the diesel generators, the redundancy protocols cannot overcome local politics. "No one is allowed in the building" is not what you want to hear when you run a data center. 

AND SO...... consider today's Sunday Blog to be my Public Service Announcement. I just experienced 72 hours of data hell. Let my pain prevent you from such a fate. Yes, you should always backup your data. You should backup your servers. But - you need to make sure to have THAT data, THAT backup in a different location. Not located at the same data center. Hurricanes, floods, fires, ransomware, anything could be lurking right around the corner. Including local Fire Marshalls keeping entire city blocks on lock-down. And when was the last time you checked the quality of your backup set? Have you ever actually tested the restoration of your data? What a sad day when you actually need to RESTORE your data, and you find out that you don't have what you thought you had. Sigh. 

I'll be rebooting MyBackupData.com this month, as a value-added member benefit for the millions of members of the (now) GlobalDLA.org because... I'm teaching everything I know. 

Ah yes, I'm 'back in' the backup business. 

www.MyBackupData.com