{"id":1770,"date":"2013-04-11T12:13:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T12:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2019-11-19T03:15:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T03:15:59","slug":"backup-and-disaster-recovery-planning-trying-and-testing-your-backups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backupassist.com\/blog\/backup-and-disaster-recovery-planning-trying-and-testing-your-backups","title":{"rendered":"Backup and Disaster Recovery Planning: Trying and Testing Your Backups"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Concept art via Pixar<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pixar studios. A stray command is zapping thousands of lines of code pulling apart Toy Story 2 in mere seconds.<\/p>\n

Oren Jacobs, the Visual Effects Lead, scrambles to the phone and quickly dials IT, demanding that they pull the plug on the server immediately. It\u2019s too late. 100,000 files of the movie have disappeared into the ether.<\/p>\n

But they had backups right? Wrong. Unbeknownst to the team backups\u00a0hadn’t\u00a0been working for the last month. Now they were really worried.<\/p>\n

Testing has to be a part of your backup and disaster recovery strategy if you\u2019re the lucky one who is responsible for a server and all its data. It\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0matter whether you are a two person engineering firm or an award winning Hollywood studio, there\u2019s no point putting effort into backups if you\u00a0aren’t\u00a0certain they\u2019ll work when you need them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also really important that you test a job straight after creation. You can guarantee it\u2019ll be one of those unhappy coincidences when you don\u2019t test your new backup job and you find out the morning after your server has crashed that the storage media\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0configured properly.<\/p>\n

In this, the first in a series of three posts, we\u2019d like to share how to test the backups\u00a0you’ve\u00a0created with BackupAssist. By the end you will be able to tell that the data you have secured has been backed up successfully.<\/p>\n

Testing your backups<\/strong><\/h2>\n

So\u00a0you’ve\u00a0got a new backup job ready and waiting. What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n

Firstly, make sure all the configs are as they should be. Do this via Backup Tab>Manage>Edit<\/strong> and by going through each of the functions on the left. Things to check for include:<\/p>\n