On March 31st, we join our industry colleagues in celebrating and promoting World Backup Day. After all, friends don’t let friends go without backups.

But…have you ever heard the tragic story of how World Backup Day came to be? Although it was thought to be lost in the mists of time and reddit, origin stories aren’t just for superheroes.

It was back in the late 2000’s – a time when virtual machines were breeding out of control, budgets were beginning to shrink, and backup administrators were slowly drowning in increasing waves of data growth and virtualization sprawl.

Imagine–if you will–our protagonist in his office, slumped in his knock-off Aeron chair. The lights are off, and the luminous glow of his food-chained CRT is casting his face in stark relief. A foreboding backup console has his full attention; he has left the failed complexity of his primary backup server interface and is now scouring individual server backups.

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His office door opens. Our hero flinches but doesn’t turn around.

“If we can’t recover the payroll backups, our heads will roll. It’ll be the last excuse our CIO needs to sign the wholesale outsourcing contract with IBM. His golf buddy was pitching it on the 17th hole last week. We’ll all be out on the street.”

There goes his manager, again, stating the obvious. Golf, CIO’s, and outsourcing contracts – a potent mix if there ever was one.

One year ago, our hero never imagined they’d be here. The team had just chosen a new backup product that, although a bit complex, checked every box on their exhaustive feature comparison matrix. The matrix was so big, they had to get a second whiteboard in the conference room. It had to be the right decision after they fought through analysis paralysis!

Unfortunately, they hadn’t realized that “too complex to work reliably” should have been a negative selection criteria. They figured that since it was a well-known product from an established vendor, it had to work.

“Our only hope is the offsite backups. Maybe some recalled tapes haven’t been overwritten or shredded yet.”

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Due to the stress and accelerating Mountain Dew crash at 3 AM, he couldn’t remember where they’d been sending their tapes. Something about a mountain made of iron. Surely, the weekly courier would know.

That was the last anyone saw of our protagonist. On the way to retrieve the tapes, he disappeared and was never seen again. Some thought he couldn’t bear to return and see his coworkers “made redundant” by the outsourcing contract.

“There be dragons on the way to the mountain of iron,” one coworker darkly joked.

“Too soon,” his office mate grumbled. “I got my pink slip this morning and only get my severance if I train my replacement.”

In that moment, they decided to make it their life mission to keep their IT comrades from experiencing the same tragedy. They’d dedicate their lives to mentoring people on backups and even create a holiday focused on educating IT folks everywhere.

While we can’t wholly vouch for the origin story above, and have good friends both at IT departments and outsourcers, we do know that…

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Could this be you? We hope not. But to help, we are proud to present…

The Buyer’s Guide to Backup & Recovery

In this guide, we discuss Backup & Recovery – What Mattered Yesterday, What Matters Today, and What Should Matter to You Now! Here are some of the things we cover:

  • Cloud Data Management
  • The cost vs value of a backup solution
  • Leveraging a solution beyond protection

Plus, the first 100 downloads will get a limited edition World Backup Day patch!

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* No dragons, tapes, or backup administrators were harmed in the making of this guide – we promise.