I’m going to take a controversial stand and argue that backups are useless.

Over the last few months I’ve worked with a client of mine to test their Disaster Recovery procedure for one of their major in-house applications. This involved multiple several-hour meetings with anywhere from 5 to 10 people at each meeting, sometimes more. Each hour probably cost the client $1000s of dollars. The cost of running these meetings and tests probably cost the client well over $100K.

This is ignoring the costs of the associated hardware, the power for the backup datacenter, the cost of heating and cooling, and of course the licensing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they easily spend more than $1 Million a year in backups and the like.

And for what? A fairly low probability event?

I mean sure, if their system failed and they had no Disaster Recovery plan it could cost them 10s of millions of dollars in business and perhaps even end up putting 100s of people out of work. But they’d find other jobs. In the meantime, all that money spent on backups could have been spent on other things like lunches for for the employees (and maybe a pizza or two for select consultants). Think of the boost to the pizza economy that would have been!

So, don’t do backups.

Oh and don’t wear a mask. They’re hot, sweaty, and really not even .1% of the US population has died. And sure, you might get COVID-19, but you’ll probably survive. Sure, you might have some cognitive long-term issues, but hey, that’s sort of like the employees at my client above who, if the company went under, could simply find another job. I mean it’s not a big deal. Amirite?

Now let’s be serious. If a DBA came in to your business and said not to bother doing backups, you’d probably laugh at them. Do backups. And of course wear a mask. There is so much evidence it makes a difference. And, socially distance for now. And reconsider large family gatherings for the next month or two, if only to help increase the odds that you can have such a gathering a year from now.

Part of this post was prompted by a question on Quora from a user asking how to recover their database if they didn’t have a backup. I hated to tell them that it might be too late and there was quite likely little they could do. And I’ve read too many heart-wrenching stories from nurses who have had to hold the hand of a dying patient because they thought Covid was no big deal or a hoax. So, please, take precautions. Even if nothing happens to you, it may happen to those close to you.

That said, I will repeat an adage about backups I heard a few SQL Saturdays ago: “Backups don’t matter, restores do!” So do backups, but restore them every once in awhile to make sure that they actually work!

For the record, with my client, not only did the official DR test run go smoothly, we beat our RTO and RPO by huge margins. If disaster strikes, it’s highly likely this customer will weather it without threatening the future of the company.