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The Backup Wrap-Up

W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup)

Formerly known as "Restore it All," The Backup Wrap-up podcast turns unappreciated backup admins into cyber recovery heroes. After a brief analysis of backup-related news, each episode dives deep into one topic that you can use to better protect your organization from data loss, be it from accidents, disasters, or ransomware.

The Backup Wrap-up is hosted by W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup) and his co-host Prasanna Malaiyandi. Curtis' passion for backups began over 30 years ago when his employer, a $35B bank, lost its purchasing database – and the backups he was in charge of were worthless. After miraculously not being fired, he resolved to learn everything he could about a topic most people try to get away from. His co-host, Prasanna, saw similar tragedies from the vendor side of the house and also wanted to do whatever he could to stop that from happening to others.

A particular focus lately has been the scourge of ransomware that is plaguing IT organizations across the globe. That's why in addition to backup and disaster recovery, we also touch on information security techniques you can use to protect your backup systems from ransomware. If you'd like to go from being unappreciated to being a cyber recovery hero, this is the podcast for you.

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  • 359 episodes
  • Updated Yesterday

Episodes359

Newest first
  • Nov 23, 2020 · 43 min

    Doctor & Public Health expert explains current state of the pandemic

    Lindsey Schulz MD/MPH visits us again to give us an update on the current state of COVID-19. There is good and bad news, here, as we are in the midst of a third wave of cases and deaths. But the good news is that health care professionals have learned a lot about the virus in the last several months that have helped to reduce the death rate somewhat, and improve quality of life for those suffering from the illness. Next week's episode will focus on the vaccines that we now know about, but this week we will just talk about the current state of the disease itself.

  • Nov 16, 2020 · 1 hr

    Election poll site manager explains US election systems

    In a departure from our normal coverage, I decided to bring on Mark Thompson, who was the Site Manager for the election polling site I volunteered at last week. He gives us insight into how elections are managed in the US, and what we do to prevent fraud and ensure the overall integrity of the system. We talk about the technology used on the front end of the polling process, which in San Diego county including Electronic Poll Books (EPBs) and Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs). We then also talk briefly about the checks and balances in the actual counting process. Although this is a departure from our normal fare, I think a lot of people will benefit from the info we discuss. Also, I also posted a blog post about this topic here: http://www.backupcentral.com/why-its-really-hard-to-rig-a-national-election/

  • Nov 9, 2020 · 41 min

    Dissecting two ransomware attacks on hospitals

    Prasanna and Curtis talk about two recent ransomware attacks on hospitals and what we can learn from them. They also discuss things you can do to protect yourself from such attacks, and how to prepare to respond if you get one. We especially talk about the 3-2-1 rule and the remote desktop protocol (RDP) and how these figure into protecting yourself from such things.

  • Nov 2, 2020 · 40 min

    Tape may be cheap, but disk is better for backups

    This isn't a rebuttal to last week's podcast, but it might seem that way. Last week we talked about the advantages of tape for very long term retention (e.g. 10 years), one of which is a significant cost advantage. This week we will discuss how backup, recovery, and disaster recovery are very different use cases, and why disk and cloud is a much more appropriate place for that use case. Joining us to discuss this topic is Druva's CTO, Stephen Manley, who has spent many years at companies that use disk for this purpose.

  • Oct 26, 2020 · 1 hr 1 min

    Why Tape is Cheaper than Glacier for Long Term Storage

    Matt Starr, CTO of Spectra, comes on the podcast to discuss the advantages of tape for long term storage. We talk about how tape is actually better at holding data long term than disk is – 10,000 times better if you compare it to SATA disk. We also talk about the advancements in tape in the last 10-20 years that have made libraries like Spectra's even more reliable than they used to be. Finally, we talk about the Spectra T-Finity library that can now hold an Exabyte of data in a single unit! What started this whole idea of bringing Matt on was Spectra's eBook that said that the T-Finity tape library was significantly cheaper than Glacier Deep Archive if you store your data for a long period of time (e.g. 10 years or more). Here's the eBook that got the conversation started: https://bit.ly/37BtTkK

  • Oct 19, 2020 · 49 min

    Why is it so hard to backup consumer SaaS products?

    Daniel Rosehill, a self-described "backup anorak," joins us to discuss how difficult it can be to backup consumer SaaS services, such as Evernote. Daniel used to use EverNote on Linux, and sent a message to their support system on how to backup its data. They had no answer unless you were using it on Windows. We talk about Google Drive, Dropbox, and other consumer-grade cloud services, and how the challenges of backing them up should be a concern for any users of these platforms – not just backup anoraks. (An anorak is a slightly prejorative term that refers to someone who is interested in a not-so-leading idea – like backups.)

  • Oct 12, 2020 · 41 min

    The Dangers of Improperly Secured Cloud Accounts

    The Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat hunting team found that a big customer of theirs had misconfigured two critical Amazon Web Services (AWS) services. If these misconfigurations were exploited by hackers, it could have created a data breach that could have cost the customers tens of millions of dollars. Prasanna Malaiyandi and W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup) discuss this misconfiguration, and what you can learn from it to protect backups you store in the cloud.

  • Oct 5, 2020 · 46 min

    Real Life Hurricane Disaster Recover Story

    A mystery guest from a multinational corporation that experienced a disaster during a recent hurricane describes their mostly-disk NetBackup environment and how they used it to recover from a hurricane that ravaged an island. (Company and location names are changed or not mentioned so "Harry Potter," our mystery guest, can speak freely.)

  • Sep 28, 2020 · 51 min

    Backing up MongoDB & Cassandra, a deep dive

    Shalabh Goyal(@goyalshalabh) joins us on this podcast to discuss sharded databases – and MongoDB and Cassandra in particular – and how one might go about backing them up. Suffice it to say that it is complicated. We learned a lot from recording this podcast and you will learn a lot listening to it!

  • Sep 21, 2020 · 46 min

    Backing up Sharded NoSQL Databases

    Tony McGarry, Senior Principal Engineer at Druva, joins W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi to talk about backing up large, multi-node, sharded NoSQL databases like DynamoDB, Cassandra, and MongoDB.

  • Sep 14, 2020 · 52 min

    What is it like to actually use VMware Cloud on AWS? (AKA VMC)

    Adam Fisher (@BonzoVT), Cloud & DevOps Engineer at RoundTower Technologies, visits the podcast to talk about VMware Cloud on AWS (AKA VMC), and what it's like to actually use and administer it in a production environment. We also talk about how people backup VMC.

  • Sep 8, 2020 · 44 min

    What makes Rust a good, safe programming language?

    Carol Nichols and Jake Goulding, the authors of the Rust in Motion video series, join us to talk about Rust and why it makes such a "safe" programming language. We discuss what it means to be a safe programming language and how Rust accomplishes that. We also discuss the upcoming free Live@Manning Rust Conference. Finding Rustaceans weird but intriguing? Secretly wanting to become one? Tune-in, Sep 15, to the live@Manning #Rust conference to find your #Rustlang pincers! http://mng.bz/qNoA Somewhere in the podcast we also give out a 40% discount code for anything at Manning.com.

  • Sep 1, 2020 · 42 min

    Proliferation of the edge, containers, & how to protect them

    Gina Rosenthal (@gminks) joins us on this week's podcast to talk about the edge, Kubernetes, and how to protect it all. Good conversation that also includes som Texas Brisket talk! We also mention the Women in Tech conference that will go live on October 13. Here's what they have to say about themselves: When the girls get coding!. Join us on your screens, Oct 13, for the live@Manning “Women in Tech” conference to celebrate the rising movement of women in technology. http://mng.bz/7GZm We still have a long way to go to achieve diversity, inclusion and equality in technology. Our contribution is the live@Manning “Women in Tech” online conference, Oct 13, starring the women rocking the tech boat! http://mng.bz/7GZm Cloud navigators and serverless gurus; algorithm sorceresses and community advocates; we proudly bring you the women creating the tech world we live in. Oct 13, live@manning “Women in Tech” Twitch conference! #womenintech #womenwhocode

  • Aug 24, 2020 · 27 min

    9 Tips for Disaster Recovery

    Prasanna and Curtis discuss their opinion of an ITPro article called Nine Tips to Improve your Disaster Recovery Strategy. In case you're curious, they are: 1. Have full documentation 2. Assess the risks 3. Drill for disaster 4. Prepare for disasters of different levels 5. Consider the cloud 6. Prioritize resilience 7. Evaluate security practices 8. Revise and Revisit 9. Build a critical response team

  • Aug 17, 2020 · 37 min

    What can we learn from the twitter hack

    Scott Lowe (@otherscottlowe) joins us on the podcast to discuss the recent major hack of Twitter, where hundreds of accounts were compromised using backdoor access gained via a Twitter employee.

  • Aug 10, 2020 · 26 min

    How to backup a NAS filer?

    W. Curtis Preston and Prasanna Malaiyandi discuss the pros and cons of the various ways to backup a NAS filer.

  • Jul 20, 2020 · 44 min

    Are cloud "snapshots" the way to protect cloud resources?

    Chris Evans (@chrismevans) discusses with us the idea of cloud "snapshots" (which are actually image copies & very different than array snapshots) and the pros and cons of using them for backup & recovery – as well as other purposes.

  • Jul 13, 2020 · 44 min

    Thoughts on the Cloud from an AWS Customer turned employee

    We are joined by Jake Burns, who is an industry veteran and an AWS and Druva customer before he became an AWS employee. He is now Enterprise Strategist at AWS and shares with us how LIveNation moved their entire corporate infrastructure to the cloud in one year, and how he now supports AWS customers in their cloud journey.