Almost every day it seems I encounter someone or some business bashing backup to tape, so it’s good to see that a 10,000 pound gorilla, Google, still uses it.<\/p>\n
On February 27th, 2011, “0.02%” of Gmail users<\/a> logged on to see an empty inbox. \u00a0It turns out that Google released a software update, presumably to a “small” group to test the change. \u00a0That update contained a software bug that not only lost users’ email, but lost multiple copies of them in multiple\u00a0data centers. \u00a0Google replicates user data between data centers for data protection, but in this rare case the software bug also affected those on-line copies of email.<\/p>\n Luckily, Google also does an backup to tape, and since those tapes are not on-line they are safe from this kind of software bug.<\/p>\n When I first heard about this in the news, I felt it was spun like “how dare Google lose email.” \u00a0I think that’s quite unfair, it only affected a small portion of their user base, and ultimately they were able to restore the data, all for a free service. \u00a0Yes some folks didn’t have access to saved emails for a couple of days, but they were all restored.<\/p>\n Could your business do the same? \u00a0I’m impressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Almost every day it seems I encounter someone or some business bashing backup to tape, so it’s good to see that a 10,000 pound gorilla, Google, still uses it. On February 27th, 2011, “0.02%” of Gmail users logged on to … Continue reading