It still seems hard to believe that, way back in 1998, we almost lost Toy Story 2. No more Woody, no Buzz, no Rex, nothing. The reason? Simple human error; someone typing a basic Linux command “RM*” that deleted everything.
Pixar had a backup copy of the movie, but it didn’t work. What saved it for Pixar and the rest of the movie-watching world was purely a stroke of luck. The technical director of the film had made a copy of the movie so they could continue working on it from home. So, if you’re familiar with the 3-2-1 data protection rule (3 copies, 2 different media, 1 copy offsite/offline) it seems that Pixar unconsciously got the last piece right (1 copy offsite/offline) and saved the movie…and the day!
You can get the full story with all the details by watching this short movie.
If you think that was a one-time fluke, and that no one could possibly create a disaster like that today with a simple command, just read what happened to Amazon AWS last year. While debugging the billing system, an employee created a perfect storm that required a “full restart” of Amazon’s infrastructure. Major websites using AWS were also impacted in the resulting domino effect.
Fortunately, these stories both had somewhat of a happy ending. Still, there are countless others that don’t.
So, if you value your critical data like we know you do, take the teachings of World Backup Day to heart and build a 3-2-1 strategy. At Quantum, we can help, of course.
Happy Backup Day![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]