A boring backup checklist that actually gets used
Almost every team we meet has backups. Far fewer have restored one in the last six months. These are the questions we ask before we trust any backup setup.
The seven questions
- When did someone last restore from this backup, and how long did it take?
- Is the backup stored outside the account that could be compromised?
- Does it include configuration and secrets, not just the database?
- Who gets an alert when a backup job fails, and do they read it?
- How much data would you lose at the worst possible moment?
- Is the restore procedure written down somewhere a new person can find it?
- Do you know what the restore costs in egress fees and time?
If the answer to the first question is "never", start there. A restore test on a spare server takes an hour and usually finds at least one surprise.