On the 10th March 2021, an OVH datacenter in France caught fire, with over 3 million websites went offline. Terabytes upon terabytes were lost in the blaze. If someone that had a server on that had not backed-up their data to a third party, aka offsite, they have lost that data forever. That is why Backups are important.
With some of the biggest servers and communities going down, such as Rust EU servers
Update:
— Rust (@playrust) March 10, 2021
We’ve confirmed a total loss of the affected EU servers during the OVH data centre fire. We’re now exploring replacing the affected servers.
Data will be unable to be restored.
We have a major incident on SBG2. The fire declared in the building. Firefighters were immediately on the scene but could not control the fire in SBG2. The whole site has been isolated which impacts all services in SGB1-4. We recommend to activate your Disaster Recovery Plan.
— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) March 10, 2021
There are 3 types of backups: local, onsite and offsite.
A local backup is when you store a copy of a file on the computer that it was created on. This is the worst type of backup, because if the computer fails, or the harddrive fails, you loose that data. You should never rely solely on local backups.
An onsite backup is when you store data on an external device that is kept on premises. Most commonly used devices are NAS (Network Added Storage) devices, hard-drives, data discs or any other mass storage types. Onsite backups are way better than local backups, as you have that extra safety of having your data backed-up on another device, and it is quickly accessible. A negative for onsite backups is if the device is stolen, lost or is burnt in a fire, as in the OVH case, you loose that data forever, as it is almost impossible to recover that data.
Offsite backups are the best types of backups. You store your data offsite, on another server and a different location. These can come in many forms, such as Google Drive, AWS, Microsoft Azure among other services. There are also types of offsite backups where you would physically leave a device in another location. Offsite backups are the best as if your local and/or onsite backups get destroyed, you have your offsite backups to return to. Offsite backups can also be differential, so when a file is changed, added etc, it gets backed-up, so you always have a live copy else where. The only limitation of offsite backups is that you require large amounts of bandwidth, but it is well worth it.
One of the best backup options are BackBlaze, where for $6/R100 (as of 11 March 2021) a month you get access to unlimited storage for all your files needs. Google Drive is also an option, with 15GB free storage at your disposal, so make good use of it. Google One also offers 100GB of extra storage for R290 a year.
BackBlaze also offers a free tier, which offers 10GB of storage for you to use, similar to Google Drive and others, but you can tie it directly to your services/websites etc.
For a more simpler approach, just get a 1/2TB harddrive and do daily backups of your important files, it is just good practice, and you never know when it comes to save your life.
Also, if you do run a large business, that relies on 3rd party backup solutions, servers etc, ensure that you have a Disaster Recovery Plan in place, incase something like the OVH fire happens, you are covered.
Here at Nerd Network Digital, we can help you with your backup solution, finding the best one for you, and getting it all linked up to your servers/web hosting.
So if we all have to learn a lesson from the OVH fire, is backup, backup, backup.
OVH sending your data to Cloud pic.twitter.com/KYUxNR7vhj
— Abderrahim Soubai-Elidrisi (@soub4i) March 10, 2021