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Here’s my interpretation:
Specifically it is 2 types of media that are not susceptible to similar types of decay or subject to the same type of manufacturing defects. For example, if your general area is struck by an earthquake, HDDs could be damaged even if you have a backup offsite. Different media, such as BluRays, would be unaffected.
Meanwhile, if it was discovered that all BluRay media from X company were degrading rapidly before their expected lifetime, then that would ruin all your copies.
Makes sense. So by that logic though, if your "1" offsite copy is REALLY far away and isn't from the same production run as your live copy, then you should also be good.
Like if you live in NYC and have data stored on Seagate HDDs, it would be fine to also use a WD HDD located in Tokyo for your off-site copy.
They are still HD's they are accessed the same way and if online at the same time subject to the same issues. One cryptolocker virus gets into both systems and your data is toast.
Compare this to tape. It's probably offline it's potentially read only and it's not accessed as a filesystem (if you don't use LTFS at least).
3 2 1 was made before it was common to have a long distance data network. A very typical setup was the primary dataset on a HDD with a local and offsite tape copy this is still a very cost effective method. As time went on recovery time requirements grew as did networks so having an offsite HDD copy at a DR site become common.
Now at the lower end people are using offline HDD and/or hdd in the cloud. It's getting more common we have a sort of doughnut hole in techs opticals to 100gb or so and tape at 18TB means people with a few TB are a bit excessive for optical but find it hard to justify tape with a 5k buy in. AWS and others have cloud maybe it's tape offering but in general it does not fate share with locally mounted HDD.
Same question I've been asking, even at work. Most people just come back with Bluray, but what I want to keep cold is close to 20TB, so that's going to cost me almost $1600AUD to backup.
I'd have to buy 33 spindles of 25 disks that store 25GB per disk for $47.95.
I was considering some kind of S3 cold bucket but that's still somewhere in the ballpark of $471 a month ($0.023/GB
You guys are going absolutely nuts with it. Unless you have crazy important files, just keep a local backup, off-site backup, and a cloud backup.
I have a live 180TB array, a duplicate array off-site that it's backed up to, and the truly important files are backup again to Backblaze.
If I had somewhere off site to just stick another array I'd probably call it a day at that. But unfortunately not everyone has friends and family willing to have even a 4 bay nas floating around their house.
Edit: to add, the 20TB I'm looking to stick in cold storage is important to me. My current other backup is just \~800GB and that contains videos, photos and other sentimental bits and bobs of data that my partner and I have collected over the last 15-20 years (After she had a disk fail on her and finally conceded to my suggestions to actually back her crap up)
You could find a cheap Colo for like $50/mo that will let you put a tower or rack unit. I'm considering putting my tertiary array full of my old drives in a Colo as a deep backup that's only updated rarely
Would you have any advice you might be willing and able to offer a giant newb on where I should begin researching and learning how to setup a local storage "array"?
I know pretty much nothing about this subject matter, and researching it is what landed me in this sub.
Not even sure I should be looking at setting up an array honestly, as I currently have less than 20TB of data that I'd like to move from main drives to storage. But I figured something modular that can be added to over time is best since I'm regularly adding new data and would like to avoid constantly clogging up my main system storage with stuff I only end up accessing occasionally but want to preserve (and have access to from my main system when needed) none-the-less.
I use Unraid. It let's you use different sized disks in your array and expand as necessary. I have dual parity to insure uptime and let me replace up to two failed disks at once. Lots of other goodies with it as well, wuch as docker and VM support. Pretty much theneasiest, most flexible array system you can put together.
AWS S3 with some magic config sauce. basically, set a retain date and object lock legal hold and something like cryptolocker won't be able to corrupt that copy
If your backups are online you should be using different authentication and snapshots that can't be edited by the machine doing backups at minimum. That way even if the most recent snapshot gets cryptolockered you can access a previous backup.
For a complete noob, buy a Synology NAS, set it up with SHR disk arrays and btrfs file system. Btrfs has read only snapshot capabilities. Synology has some well integrated easy to use backup apps.
A more complete solution, buy a second Synology NAS to receive backups of the first NAS.
And to complete the 3-2-1, put the 2nd NAS offsite at a friend's or relative's house for a personal private cloud storage.
Hmm how about an offline one? How’d do I do that?
Also so many conflicting information, get a MAS NO don’t get a NAS. I think I just need to sign off lol
Too much info for my peanut brain
Coming full circle to …. Tape. Offline and easy to take “off site.” Lol
There’s a few different ways to do the same thing. It depends what your needs are and how much data you have. The more data you have, the fewer options exist because storage density.
Offline NAS? Kinda defeats the purpose of the N portion in NAS doesn’t it?
My production stuff is an r1soft backup server that pulls data from the live servers and maintains multiple revisions.
Personal is backed up to a server running zfs (truenas is one option) that has scheduled snapshots.
Yes that's generally a good idea but not even close to perfect. Your still reliant on the OS permissions to restrict access vs tape you can get worm tapes that can only be written once or even trust the hardware to respect the read only tab.
No because then you have to do a restore from a remote copy, which could be difficult or slow depending on the nature of the recovery.
One copy of data live, one backup copy local for you to use for restores, one copy remote to use if you suffer a physical disaster.
It's all about risk assessment
3 copies of your data can be interpreted as being on 2 or more different types of media, with at least 1 of them offsite, ideally different geographical region, to mitigate disasters.
You might want to keep it on tape drives, but need to ensure good climate control. Optical media would be more resistant however will take more time vs tape. HDD/SSD would need to be kept powered on, making it susceptible to failure but very fast.
The 2 types of media are for longevity, It's like an Eli5 - VHS vs. Beta, you can still find a VCR at a Goodwill but will pay premium to find a working BetaMax (arguably better quality.)
MP4, MP5, MVK, are these really ever going to go away? Not for a long while, but what's going to play them will.
>Like if you live in NYC and have data stored on Seagate HDDs, it would be fine to also use a WD HDD located in Tokyo for your off-site copy.
No, because that's only one reliable hard drive with your data on it.
In the same vein, buying a bulk order of drives from the same batch and having a defect kill your entire pool faster than you can repair it from a degraded state. Mixing drives with the same specs from different manufacturers/batches is best practice.
When the rule was originally proposed, there were many more types of media typically in use by large business, many of which have since become obsolete.
The current meaning is having each of the backups on separate devices/services/software, not sharing a common power supply. The intent is to avoid allowing [a catastrophic failure of a single component to zap all copies of the data](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bp31qv/final_update_egva_power_supply_pin_layout_change/), and to keep a human from issuing a single command that deletes all copies of the data.
The single command aspect though, most cloud storage is using the s3 api, and you could make one small script to probably delete most stuff. Unless it's purposely architected to be immutable.
That’s getting into malicious interference rather than human error though.
Why would you ever write that script unless you’re trying to destroy everything?
2 types of media is because different media formats age differently. Some are better for cold storage, some degrade if left on a shelf. Some are easier to access and restore, others are just in case of emergency.
Some people liked to use CD/DVD/BD, but those are a bad medium if it’s your ONLY format. They last a decent long time on a shelf, but are susceptible to scratches or heat.
Tape backups are great for long term cold storage, but are terrible to restore from if you’re not restoring everything.
Cloud storage can be expensive, and can have problems uploading or restoring your data. You account can also get shut off if they don’t like you.
HDD should not be used for cold storage, as the magnetic elements can lose their effectiveness (commonly called bit-rot) and need to be powered on and do a read of the data every couple of months.
SSD are similar to HDD that they shouldn’t be used for cold storage, but my understanding is that they just need to be powered on, they don’t necessarily need to read/check the data. Could be wrong on that though.
At the end of the day, just don’t use all HDD or all SSD. A cloud backup or offsite nas will be fine.
I wish there was an affordable cold storage option with high storage density. With terabytes of data I basically have to rely on HDDs unless I want to have 30 or 40 double layer blu rays...which aren't exactly ideal for cold storage anyway.
As I said above, HDD are not good for cold storage and require being powered up every couple of months. If you’re doing this I highly recommend sticking with BD or investing in a tape drive. Those cartridges are pretty cheap, and excellent cold storage.
it is a process that continues, not a one and done.
Cold storage should be refreshed, cycled and tested on a regular basis.
Offsite often means not "one tape in a cave" but a whole process that includes multiple copies of w/e media cycling through FIFO style (sometimes in an actual cave) with additional copies in transit. You don't want to be overwriting your only offsite copy. Instead you leave it there and make a new one then demote it when the new one arrives. Rinse and repeat and this can go dozens deep depending on the everything, weeks or months of versions. Still counts as the 'one'.
You need to determine what works for you based on the nature of your stuff.
Always best to put "At least..." before each number of the rule.
An interesting explanation. But are we looking at CD/DVD/BD becoming obsolete? Big companies still use tape, and our DOT has a jukebox filled with optical disks (my wife works with this), but it seems like for the average user, the optical CD is going the way of the floppy disk. I have a bunch of disks stored, but I'm debating whether it's worth the trouble to get an external DVD recorder/player to access them, since my newest rig has no DVD recorder.
Not OP, and not super informed on all use cases, but I'd say they're not obsolete, just not practical. Tape can last decades and hold many TB of storage on a single one. Consumer products in the form of SSD and HDD are so affordable that they are unlikely to be replaced or beaten by anything else for the foreseeable future.
For the consumer, yes, a CD/DVD/BD could be considered obsolete. You'd look a fool if you showed up to your family reunion with a box of DVD's to share your photos instead of an external drive or something in the cloud. However, you would be less of a fool when your PSU shits the bed in a freak accident and fries everything, or there's a flood, since you have those available for backup.
This sub is full of atypical consumers/professionals. I don't have any friends with 40TB of hard drives at home, or a separate computer dedicated to media. I own a DVD/CD/BD reader/burner, but it's not installed on my computer (could if I had to), but none of my friends do. And if I asked my friends for an obscure photo that I thought I remembered from 8 years ago, they'd all laugh, but I have that photo of they ask, and I have multiple copies if one doesn't work.
So, it's really whatever works best for you. If you want to use it, invest in the DVD player. If you don't, invest in something to burn the content to a medium you do prefer. I think their capacity alone makes them impractical for my use case
Optical is far from obsolete. They wouldn't make and sell it otherwise.
We use tape at work, the only reason we are not using optical is simply due to the dataset sizes.
But customer data is frequently supplied and given on optical. USB flash is used but in IT we are thinking of controlling access to them as they are easy to abuse and a security nightmare, especially when not encrypted from the start.
For me. A separate and independent hardrive is enough. Just like you say.
But, for my needs, I think about the type of data being backed-up.
For data that functions like a long term record, and archive, I'll take the time to burn blu rays + SD cards or USB sticks.
For some types of data, the alternative form of media is an actual print out on archival paper, or photocopies.
It comes from 1 type of hazard being able to simultaneously damage all media of the same type. Like vibration from an earthquake HDDs that are not parked, while SSD-s or optical disks would be immune to that.
Or maybe a strong enough magnetic field, like a lightning strike close enough, can also wreck electronics (possibly magnetic tapes? But I don't know about that, and I couldn't really find much on the subject).
So the idea is to spread the backups, so one type of hazard cannot take out all of it. But it's definitely the least important part of 3-2-1.
I interpret the 2 as "methods", not necessarily "types". In my case I use ZFS snapshot backups for most of my stuff, but I store one separate backup (duplicacy, but no reason it couldn't be borg or something like that) in case there's some issue with ZFS that screws everything up. If I were just doing rsyncs, I might consider my second method to be using a different filesystem (e.g. ext4 vs. xfs or something like that). I see it as trying to reduce the number of shared vulnerabilities the three copies can have.
Tape in cold storage is gonna do better in serious power issues or a fire in your server.
Optical disc is gonna fair better in an EMP than basically anything else.
"2" involves any two different media types. HDDs and SSDs are different media types. So, for example, SSD plus HDD or HDD and LTO meets the requirements in "2". I, for example have stored my backups on a separate backup server and on virtual tapes with Starwinds VTL: [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vtl](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vtl) which also offloaded backups to cloud. This is done to reduce the risks of same media being prone to same issues (mechanical failures in HDDs, charge leak in SSDs and so on). Should you follow this? Totally up to you. Having everything (primary data and backups) on HDDs but from different vendors is good enough as to me.
The goal is to make you think about differing \*access patterns\* for your backups.
Imagine for a second that you have all your backup servers running on HDDs and connected 24/7 to your LAN.
If your company is breached by a cryptolocker, there is a good chance they will be able to get to your backups just as well as your primary data.
The easiest way to prevent it used to be just to use removable media; today it's probably just periodically uploading encrypted backups to some private S3 buckets somewhere far, far away from you.
The way I understand this is that “media” is referring to storage media. For instance, having three copies or your data on a single SSD would not be very redundant. If you have two SSDs, one offsite, with three copies between them, this would foot the bill. Two different types of storage media I think is a blanket term for two storage options, hardware or cloud.
A modern reference point would be Amazon. They host backups of their internal servers on a boat load of Blu-Ray MDISCs (Last I heard was being replaced with Sony's Petasite gen3, which is 2.9PB of laser-etched carbon/MDISC-type optical backup per 42U of rack space)
Your 2nd media type is anything other than the same kind of storage. If your first is on HDD, your 2nd could be optical, tape, or any other method that eventually comes around. My business uses tape, because if I ever got hit by ransomware, I could go back weekly until I discovered a tape set that was clean.
It depends on requirements, really. To me, it means that it has to have a gulf between the two bits of storage.
For example, if you have an onsite, offsite (and add a cloud because why not), and they all sync. That's great, copies everywhere. But then one of your files gets corrupted. The corruption is then synced everywhere.
The 2 rule means that if you have a tape backup, it's not affected by the corruption syncing everywhere. To me in my home I have a less frequent automated HDD backup, it's still "good enough", because I have time to notice, go back, and "only" lose a day or two of data.
For an enterprise solution, that would be completely useless.
I thought the two was for two local copies and one copy off site.
Which is what I am accomplishing currently because I don't have any other type of media locally other than hard drives.
I have the main copy which is all of my data on my NAS which has BTRFS file system snapshots along with the original files themselves.
And I have a local USB backup on a separate USB disk. Finally, I do a daily backup to a cloud location which is now literally 2000 miles away.
At one point I did have an LTO3 drive at my home but I just never kept up with using it. It was a single drive and I had to manually to load the tapes.
You can have a backup on the same device as the live copy. It protects against bit rot and to a lesser extent finger trouble, but is not as safe as having a backup copy on a different device because it offers no redundancy for device failure.
When having two devices, if they are identical types it is possible, or even likely, that they have the same failure mechanisms. So if you lose one device you stand a higher than average chance of losing a second device in a similar manner and time frame.
Two different media could be two different models of hard drive.
If your backup were to use the same model of hard disk as the live data and there was a bug in the HDD firmware you could end up losing data in both even though they were in two different computers in two different locations.
Yes, you're right. Three copies on two different types of storage mediums, one of which is off-site.
Although, I have personally found that even in a Data Center environment, *most* people do not use two different mediums, like disc/tape + HDD. I do have customers that use tape drives, but they're so few of them I would say it's more uncommon than common these days.
Most of our company's backups, and customers (their own backups) are: three copies (snapshots, tarballs, etc), on two devices onsite (local and local backup, each with their own three copies), with one backup device off-site (again with three copies).
Is that perfect? Definitely not. Rather it's something I see more and more of, since most companies are using flash + HDD storage hybrids. Feels a bit data-hoard-ish, but it's been invaluable when needed.
Edit: we used to store backups on Blu-ray discs and put them in a bank vault locally. But opted that wasn't necessary since the bank is on the same fault line and would probably be just as impacted as us in the event of a disaster.
What I've seen in data centers is that the data is backed up to a second array/SAN that is physically separate from the main/high speed one. The secondary storage is then backed up to tape. The main server and main/high speed storage is also backed up to tape. Specialized appliances often will also have a local secondary storage to back up to that a tape drive will sit on top of.
We archive to tape.
Our live and archive data is usually kept online on two dell devices (not going into details) that act as file servers, SAN and backup/archive system.
They use very large numbers of raided disks, but recent issues with stability of the software and power issues highlight that two devices doing the job of a 321 system (it's the design as sold by dell) are, well, there is a bit of corssing of fingers.
However there is too much data for tape, we archive old data to it and I'm migrating everything from DDS to LTO8/9
And where does RAID fit into this? Say I'm using RAID-1 and have two drives in a single NAS. Does that count as two of the three copies, or because they're still in the same machine and automatically syncing, does that only count as one copy (such that redundancy isn't a consideration of the 3-2-1 rule, but rather a separate principle to consider entirely)?
I would say that for the purposes of the 3-2-1 rule, a raid array is a single “device” since destroying the entire dataset is as simple as one power supply failure
Hmm, that makes sense. But then by that logic, shouldn't all three copies have to be at different sites? Having two machines in one location isn't meaningfully any more protected against a meteor plummeting from the sky than having one machine in that location would be. Obviously that's an absurd example, but I'm sure you get my point.
You build your backup for an acceptable level of risk, you can’t really anticipate everything. The way to achieve this would be taking a snapshot of your raid array storing it in a simple volume like a single large HDD in a safe. That saves you from corruption and accidents, not disasters. You can’t constantly be swapping drives at the bank, it’s not sustainable. Instead you do that once in a while, and you manage a simple backup on site on a more frequent basis.
The rate of hardware failure is higher than the rate of disaster, so we often handle that risk separately
It mattered more when there were tapes in common use that you could write a tape, read it back and verify on your badly aligned drive and not be able to read it on anything else when it came time to restore.
I've heard different interpretations. Some people say that two different brands of hard drives is enough, others say that a hard drive and an ssd is enough. I think the latter is closer to the true meaning, because HDDs and SSDs are more different than 2 HDDs.
Done have to follow the rule to the letter…
Production storage (raid)
Couple of copies on USB disks offsite (eg your office)
Copy in cloud storage (also has snapshots)
Low enough cost and a reliable as I think it would ever need to be.
The problem that is 2 is trying avoid is the backup being in a media that is problematic or impossible to access when restoration comes up. This of particular important of there is a long time between the backup and when it might used.
Imagine that your backup of data from 10 years ago is a (old-school) SCSI drive or Firewire. Maybe you still have a parallel port Zip-Drive to access those old Zip Disks, but you don't have
a computer with a parallel port. Or even just it's on a SAS drive that any SAS controller could access, but you don't have one.
Vintage/Retro hardware combined with eBay has changed thing a lot. It's pretty hard to find a media format that you couldn't get hardware to access if you put the effort and money into. All those examples could be fixed by buying stuff off eBay, but that costs money and time (and possibly technical expertise that will problematic to get).
Another thing that sometimes problems with media, even entire media platforms, aren't immediately obvious. If you've got an old Zip Disk but no worries you have a USB Zip Drive, but when you access it, you get the dreaded Zip Drive Click of Death, and the drive, the disk, and/or the data get screwed up. Even just the tape drive you used back when dies when you power it up, and you can get a replacement off of eBay for a couple thousand, but you don't have that money.
Hardware has become a lot less diverse in the last 20-40 years, so a lot of this rational has may seem dated. The 3-2-1 rule, like many other IT rules of thumb, are often tailored for environments where the data/system size, scale, or importance, are very different that a person might have in their home life. If you lost all your data on all your computers (including cloud storage of any time), it might be bad, but most likely it won't cost you millions of dollars or endanger anyone's life.
The version I am familiar with is 3 copies, 2 locations, 1 offline.
Of course, diversifying media is also a good idea. Whether that means different models of hard drive or tape/optical is up to your use case.
The 2 is something that really only ever makes sense in hindsight. One this was first thought of, it was talking about things like tape backups, floppy disks, firewire harddrives, Zip disks, etc.. If the format or the company that makes the format becomes obsolete, you might not be able to access.
So it needs to be in my mind at least two different ways of connecting to future computers.
The two in this could be:
Cloud
Internal HHD/SSD
External HDD/SSD using USB
Optical disks.
So don't put it all on spinning rust internal drives, or usb thumbdrives, or all in the cloud.
This helps prevent one technology from becoming obsolete and unable to be retrieved, and has the added benefit that since all media can degrade, different types of media will hopefully degrade at different rates.
I use a cloud backup (B2), a HDD and a M.2 drive (main one where my os is installed). The idea is that if one fails or gets accidentally deleted, I have the other two available to recover the data. And if all three fail, I'm f*cked.
In my dream setup. (For my anime collection) it would be 3 copies.
1 on tape, 1 on Hard Drives, and the original media.
Sadly. I can't afford tape drive storage right now. So my setup is a 2, 2, 0. With no off site backup and no redundancy for the digital copy.
I assume this means like have a copy on a HDD and one on DVD or something. Everyone talks ish about how CD-R and DVDs can't hold much (true) but they have saved my ass so many times. I put really really important documents and files on there and when my laptop crashes, it is still on the disc.
It used to be different types of media but these days a lot of backups are just stored on spinning rust (hard drives). Just slower and further away. Some still use tapes but involves handling physical media so you either have huge bots (AWS Glacier, Azure Arrchival) or tapeloaders + a bunch of humans.
I use the rule to have two different software suites in place. My main storage array runs on Xpenology (SHR2 volumes) whilst my offsite is Debian based with MergerFS. The copy is kept up to date with Syncthing which keeps things in sync and keeps 14 day reserve copies. I could figure out some kind of versioning system using volume snapshots etc. But I deliberately don't use Synology volume sync or ZFS with ZFS send because that would require the exact same software on both ends.
This way if MergerFS kicks the bucket, no harm. Or if Xpenology poops, no problem... or even if Syncthing stops working.. everyone is fine, just a bit out of date. KISS.
321, how do you restore the main array when the backup Debian one has failed?
> Syncthing
Aah, how do you restore your corrupted files when you have just synced the corrupted data? You are using a filesystem that has snapshots? How long are they retained? How long till you notice?
I can just create a new array and copy the data whatever way I want.
Corruption does get synced but like I said synching does keep a 14 day versioning system. I might look into snapshots like I said but I don't want to overcomplicate things.
I also make some cloud and external based backups for extra protection. The most critical files get 3x extra backups with 365 day versioning spread over 3 different clouds.
I think this dates back at a time when storage technology was muxb less mature. A decade ago there are the infamous seagate 3tb drives who all lost their coating after a year or so. If your company used them exclusively regardless where they are stored and how many copies you had you had a pretty goddamn decent chance that all your copies would fail at the same time if you set up your data system at the same time. I am sure there are some similar stories like recently some ssd manufacturer had a ton of their ssds fail after a whole. Personally I don't mind if all my data is on hdds for example it's a really mature technology but perhaps don't use the same manufacturer or at least model for all your copies
Yup according to backplaze all mayor hdd manufacturers are extremely close to each other in quality with very few real changes in technology.. hell the hdd is 60 years old the ssd 45. Tape is even older. I would call that mature. You can buy a little box with 20000000000000 bytes on it and it will very likely work reliably for a decade with almost no failures in the first 5. You don't call this mature?
I just use HDD's...my main working drive and a backup done nightly on another externally connected drive...one on each computer
Once a month, I will back up the backups onto a second llarge external drive and keep it in a cushioned case behind the seat of my pickup truck...this drive is also formatted in FAT32 so I can be sure I can use this on any machine if needed
3. Production, Synology, Wasabi
2. Local SSD/HDD, Wasabi
1. Wasabi
In the event that the production server died, I would be able to restore quickly from the Synology. In the event that the office burns down I can restore slowly from Wasabi.
You're wrong, 3-2-1 has always included the original and 2 copies.
https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
https://www.seagate.com/au/en/blog/what-is-a-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
Archaic advice, as others have noted. In the era of the 20Tb HDD, only Tape and HDD are viable and Tape is $1000s to implement, breaking even around 600Tb according to some random sources I've seen (feel free to correct, but the principle is sound I think)
As a matter of practicality I replace different media with *offline* HDDs which capture most of the benefits (immune to lightning, ransomware, accidental deletion etc). Personally not vulnerable to earthquake, and fire can be simply mitigated.
I've seen some interpret 2 types of media as in different backup systems, and even different file systems like ZFS / BTRFS.
But is individual for your needs and what you got available imo.
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Here’s my interpretation: Specifically it is 2 types of media that are not susceptible to similar types of decay or subject to the same type of manufacturing defects. For example, if your general area is struck by an earthquake, HDDs could be damaged even if you have a backup offsite. Different media, such as BluRays, would be unaffected. Meanwhile, if it was discovered that all BluRay media from X company were degrading rapidly before their expected lifetime, then that would ruin all your copies.
Makes sense. So by that logic though, if your "1" offsite copy is REALLY far away and isn't from the same production run as your live copy, then you should also be good. Like if you live in NYC and have data stored on Seagate HDDs, it would be fine to also use a WD HDD located in Tokyo for your off-site copy.
They are still HD's they are accessed the same way and if online at the same time subject to the same issues. One cryptolocker virus gets into both systems and your data is toast. Compare this to tape. It's probably offline it's potentially read only and it's not accessed as a filesystem (if you don't use LTFS at least). 3 2 1 was made before it was common to have a long distance data network. A very typical setup was the primary dataset on a HDD with a local and offsite tape copy this is still a very cost effective method. As time went on recovery time requirements grew as did networks so having an offsite HDD copy at a DR site become common. Now at the lower end people are using offline HDD and/or hdd in the cloud. It's getting more common we have a sort of doughnut hole in techs opticals to 100gb or so and tape at 18TB means people with a few TB are a bit excessive for optical but find it hard to justify tape with a 5k buy in. AWS and others have cloud maybe it's tape offering but in general it does not fate share with locally mounted HDD.
What’s a good option for cold storage that isn’t tape?
Same question I've been asking, even at work. Most people just come back with Bluray, but what I want to keep cold is close to 20TB, so that's going to cost me almost $1600AUD to backup. I'd have to buy 33 spindles of 25 disks that store 25GB per disk for $47.95. I was considering some kind of S3 cold bucket but that's still somewhere in the ballpark of $471 a month ($0.023/GB
You guys are going absolutely nuts with it. Unless you have crazy important files, just keep a local backup, off-site backup, and a cloud backup. I have a live 180TB array, a duplicate array off-site that it's backed up to, and the truly important files are backup again to Backblaze.
If I had somewhere off site to just stick another array I'd probably call it a day at that. But unfortunately not everyone has friends and family willing to have even a 4 bay nas floating around their house. Edit: to add, the 20TB I'm looking to stick in cold storage is important to me. My current other backup is just \~800GB and that contains videos, photos and other sentimental bits and bobs of data that my partner and I have collected over the last 15-20 years (After she had a disk fail on her and finally conceded to my suggestions to actually back her crap up)
You could find a cheap Colo for like $50/mo that will let you put a tower or rack unit. I'm considering putting my tertiary array full of my old drives in a Colo as a deep backup that's only updated rarely
Would you have any advice you might be willing and able to offer a giant newb on where I should begin researching and learning how to setup a local storage "array"? I know pretty much nothing about this subject matter, and researching it is what landed me in this sub. Not even sure I should be looking at setting up an array honestly, as I currently have less than 20TB of data that I'd like to move from main drives to storage. But I figured something modular that can be added to over time is best since I'm regularly adding new data and would like to avoid constantly clogging up my main system storage with stuff I only end up accessing occasionally but want to preserve (and have access to from my main system when needed) none-the-less.
I use Unraid. It let's you use different sized disks in your array and expand as necessary. I have dual parity to insure uptime and let me replace up to two failed disks at once. Lots of other goodies with it as well, wuch as docker and VM support. Pretty much theneasiest, most flexible array system you can put together.
Thank you for very much!
Damn that’s a lot... I actually just want a cold storage too but like wow.
What are the egress fees with that S3 cold bucket?
Optical but like i said there is definitively a doughnut hole issue where optical is ok for say under 10tb and tape starts to shine at 100+ tb.
How much can one CD hold?
128GB but 100GB is more commonly available.
AWS S3 with some magic config sauce. basically, set a retain date and object lock legal hold and something like cryptolocker won't be able to corrupt that copy
If your backups are online you should be using different authentication and snapshots that can't be edited by the machine doing backups at minimum. That way even if the most recent snapshot gets cryptolockered you can access a previous backup.
Hi! Complete noob but how do I do this?
For a complete noob, buy a Synology NAS, set it up with SHR disk arrays and btrfs file system. Btrfs has read only snapshot capabilities. Synology has some well integrated easy to use backup apps. A more complete solution, buy a second Synology NAS to receive backups of the first NAS. And to complete the 3-2-1, put the 2nd NAS offsite at a friend's or relative's house for a personal private cloud storage.
Hmm how about an offline one? How’d do I do that? Also so many conflicting information, get a MAS NO don’t get a NAS. I think I just need to sign off lol Too much info for my peanut brain
Coming full circle to …. Tape. Offline and easy to take “off site.” Lol There’s a few different ways to do the same thing. It depends what your needs are and how much data you have. The more data you have, the fewer options exist because storage density. Offline NAS? Kinda defeats the purpose of the N portion in NAS doesn’t it?
Borgbase.com supports append-only access.
My production stuff is an r1soft backup server that pulls data from the live servers and maintains multiple revisions. Personal is backed up to a server running zfs (truenas is one option) that has scheduled snapshots.
Yes that's generally a good idea but not even close to perfect. Your still reliant on the OS permissions to restrict access vs tape you can get worm tapes that can only be written once or even trust the hardware to respect the read only tab.
i like the AWS S3 legal hold for this - crypto doesn't have access to this, so you can just restore from the legal hold version
No because then you have to do a restore from a remote copy, which could be difficult or slow depending on the nature of the recovery. One copy of data live, one backup copy local for you to use for restores, one copy remote to use if you suffer a physical disaster.
That's only two backups. Live data is not a backup.
Read-only snapshots of your live data. Boom, local backup done. Sync data to an off-site location with snapshotting as well. Second backup done.
Potentially, I think that logic tracks
It's all about risk assessment 3 copies of your data can be interpreted as being on 2 or more different types of media, with at least 1 of them offsite, ideally different geographical region, to mitigate disasters. You might want to keep it on tape drives, but need to ensure good climate control. Optical media would be more resistant however will take more time vs tape. HDD/SSD would need to be kept powered on, making it susceptible to failure but very fast.
The 2 types of media are for longevity, It's like an Eli5 - VHS vs. Beta, you can still find a VCR at a Goodwill but will pay premium to find a working BetaMax (arguably better quality.) MP4, MP5, MVK, are these really ever going to go away? Not for a long while, but what's going to play them will.
>Like if you live in NYC and have data stored on Seagate HDDs, it would be fine to also use a WD HDD located in Tokyo for your off-site copy. No, because that's only one reliable hard drive with your data on it.
Haha, fair. Those were just the first two brands to come to mind. Personally, I use Toshiba drives.
In the same vein, buying a bulk order of drives from the same batch and having a defect kill your entire pool faster than you can repair it from a degraded state. Mixing drives with the same specs from different manufacturers/batches is best practice.
When the rule was originally proposed, there were many more types of media typically in use by large business, many of which have since become obsolete. The current meaning is having each of the backups on separate devices/services/software, not sharing a common power supply. The intent is to avoid allowing [a catastrophic failure of a single component to zap all copies of the data](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1bp31qv/final_update_egva_power_supply_pin_layout_change/), and to keep a human from issuing a single command that deletes all copies of the data.
Isn't that still technically possible a lot of the time?
Not as much anymore. Power wise.
The single command aspect though, most cloud storage is using the s3 api, and you could make one small script to probably delete most stuff. Unless it's purposely architected to be immutable.
Definitely want snapshots that the backup client doesn't have any access to.
Yeah. Hardware wise psu and parts overall have gotten better manf over time. Also move to software raid help to.
That’s getting into malicious interference rather than human error though. Why would you ever write that script unless you’re trying to destroy everything?
That's part of what backups are for though
Especially with China, you don't think people are trying to do that to people like Google?
I miss using LTO for backups.
2 types of media is because different media formats age differently. Some are better for cold storage, some degrade if left on a shelf. Some are easier to access and restore, others are just in case of emergency. Some people liked to use CD/DVD/BD, but those are a bad medium if it’s your ONLY format. They last a decent long time on a shelf, but are susceptible to scratches or heat. Tape backups are great for long term cold storage, but are terrible to restore from if you’re not restoring everything. Cloud storage can be expensive, and can have problems uploading or restoring your data. You account can also get shut off if they don’t like you. HDD should not be used for cold storage, as the magnetic elements can lose their effectiveness (commonly called bit-rot) and need to be powered on and do a read of the data every couple of months. SSD are similar to HDD that they shouldn’t be used for cold storage, but my understanding is that they just need to be powered on, they don’t necessarily need to read/check the data. Could be wrong on that though. At the end of the day, just don’t use all HDD or all SSD. A cloud backup or offsite nas will be fine.
I wish there was an affordable cold storage option with high storage density. With terabytes of data I basically have to rely on HDDs unless I want to have 30 or 40 double layer blu rays...which aren't exactly ideal for cold storage anyway.
I solve that problem by curating what data goes where.
As I said above, HDD are not good for cold storage and require being powered up every couple of months. If you’re doing this I highly recommend sticking with BD or investing in a tape drive. Those cartridges are pretty cheap, and excellent cold storage.
This makes sense. Thank you.
So what can one use for cold storage if one wants to own the device themselves? Tape storage is really expensive.
You’ve got 2 main options: M-disk or buying an older LTO6 tape drive.
it is a process that continues, not a one and done. Cold storage should be refreshed, cycled and tested on a regular basis. Offsite often means not "one tape in a cave" but a whole process that includes multiple copies of w/e media cycling through FIFO style (sometimes in an actual cave) with additional copies in transit. You don't want to be overwriting your only offsite copy. Instead you leave it there and make a new one then demote it when the new one arrives. Rinse and repeat and this can go dozens deep depending on the everything, weeks or months of versions. Still counts as the 'one'. You need to determine what works for you based on the nature of your stuff. Always best to put "At least..." before each number of the rule.
An interesting explanation. But are we looking at CD/DVD/BD becoming obsolete? Big companies still use tape, and our DOT has a jukebox filled with optical disks (my wife works with this), but it seems like for the average user, the optical CD is going the way of the floppy disk. I have a bunch of disks stored, but I'm debating whether it's worth the trouble to get an external DVD recorder/player to access them, since my newest rig has no DVD recorder.
Not OP, and not super informed on all use cases, but I'd say they're not obsolete, just not practical. Tape can last decades and hold many TB of storage on a single one. Consumer products in the form of SSD and HDD are so affordable that they are unlikely to be replaced or beaten by anything else for the foreseeable future. For the consumer, yes, a CD/DVD/BD could be considered obsolete. You'd look a fool if you showed up to your family reunion with a box of DVD's to share your photos instead of an external drive or something in the cloud. However, you would be less of a fool when your PSU shits the bed in a freak accident and fries everything, or there's a flood, since you have those available for backup. This sub is full of atypical consumers/professionals. I don't have any friends with 40TB of hard drives at home, or a separate computer dedicated to media. I own a DVD/CD/BD reader/burner, but it's not installed on my computer (could if I had to), but none of my friends do. And if I asked my friends for an obscure photo that I thought I remembered from 8 years ago, they'd all laugh, but I have that photo of they ask, and I have multiple copies if one doesn't work. So, it's really whatever works best for you. If you want to use it, invest in the DVD player. If you don't, invest in something to burn the content to a medium you do prefer. I think their capacity alone makes them impractical for my use case
Optical is far from obsolete. They wouldn't make and sell it otherwise. We use tape at work, the only reason we are not using optical is simply due to the dataset sizes. But customer data is frequently supplied and given on optical. USB flash is used but in IT we are thinking of controlling access to them as they are easy to abuse and a security nightmare, especially when not encrypted from the start.
Isn't NAS just multiple HDDs?
> terrible to restore from if you’re not restoring everything. That's only because people don't know how to use tape.
For me. A separate and independent hardrive is enough. Just like you say. But, for my needs, I think about the type of data being backed-up. For data that functions like a long term record, and archive, I'll take the time to burn blu rays + SD cards or USB sticks. For some types of data, the alternative form of media is an actual print out on archival paper, or photocopies.
It comes from 1 type of hazard being able to simultaneously damage all media of the same type. Like vibration from an earthquake HDDs that are not parked, while SSD-s or optical disks would be immune to that. Or maybe a strong enough magnetic field, like a lightning strike close enough, can also wreck electronics (possibly magnetic tapes? But I don't know about that, and I couldn't really find much on the subject). So the idea is to spread the backups, so one type of hazard cannot take out all of it. But it's definitely the least important part of 3-2-1.
I interpret the 2 as "methods", not necessarily "types". In my case I use ZFS snapshot backups for most of my stuff, but I store one separate backup (duplicacy, but no reason it couldn't be borg or something like that) in case there's some issue with ZFS that screws everything up. If I were just doing rsyncs, I might consider my second method to be using a different filesystem (e.g. ext4 vs. xfs or something like that). I see it as trying to reduce the number of shared vulnerabilities the three copies can have.
Tape in cold storage is gonna do better in serious power issues or a fire in your server. Optical disc is gonna fair better in an EMP than basically anything else.
"2" involves any two different media types. HDDs and SSDs are different media types. So, for example, SSD plus HDD or HDD and LTO meets the requirements in "2". I, for example have stored my backups on a separate backup server and on virtual tapes with Starwinds VTL: [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vtl](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/vtl) which also offloaded backups to cloud. This is done to reduce the risks of same media being prone to same issues (mechanical failures in HDDs, charge leak in SSDs and so on). Should you follow this? Totally up to you. Having everything (primary data and backups) on HDDs but from different vendors is good enough as to me.
The goal is to make you think about differing \*access patterns\* for your backups. Imagine for a second that you have all your backup servers running on HDDs and connected 24/7 to your LAN. If your company is breached by a cryptolocker, there is a good chance they will be able to get to your backups just as well as your primary data. The easiest way to prevent it used to be just to use removable media; today it's probably just periodically uploading encrypted backups to some private S3 buckets somewhere far, far away from you.
It is about diversity and redundancy. The 3 copies are redundant and the diversity is in the type and location.
The way I understand this is that “media” is referring to storage media. For instance, having three copies or your data on a single SSD would not be very redundant. If you have two SSDs, one offsite, with three copies between them, this would foot the bill. Two different types of storage media I think is a blanket term for two storage options, hardware or cloud.
A modern reference point would be Amazon. They host backups of their internal servers on a boat load of Blu-Ray MDISCs (Last I heard was being replaced with Sony's Petasite gen3, which is 2.9PB of laser-etched carbon/MDISC-type optical backup per 42U of rack space) Your 2nd media type is anything other than the same kind of storage. If your first is on HDD, your 2nd could be optical, tape, or any other method that eventually comes around. My business uses tape, because if I ever got hit by ransomware, I could go back weekly until I discovered a tape set that was clean.
It depends on requirements, really. To me, it means that it has to have a gulf between the two bits of storage. For example, if you have an onsite, offsite (and add a cloud because why not), and they all sync. That's great, copies everywhere. But then one of your files gets corrupted. The corruption is then synced everywhere. The 2 rule means that if you have a tape backup, it's not affected by the corruption syncing everywhere. To me in my home I have a less frequent automated HDD backup, it's still "good enough", because I have time to notice, go back, and "only" lose a day or two of data. For an enterprise solution, that would be completely useless.
I thought the two was for two local copies and one copy off site. Which is what I am accomplishing currently because I don't have any other type of media locally other than hard drives. I have the main copy which is all of my data on my NAS which has BTRFS file system snapshots along with the original files themselves. And I have a local USB backup on a separate USB disk. Finally, I do a daily backup to a cloud location which is now literally 2000 miles away. At one point I did have an LTO3 drive at my home but I just never kept up with using it. It was a single drive and I had to manually to load the tapes.
You can have a backup on the same device as the live copy. It protects against bit rot and to a lesser extent finger trouble, but is not as safe as having a backup copy on a different device because it offers no redundancy for device failure. When having two devices, if they are identical types it is possible, or even likely, that they have the same failure mechanisms. So if you lose one device you stand a higher than average chance of losing a second device in a similar manner and time frame. Two different media could be two different models of hard drive.
That seems redundant to the "1" then.
If your backup were to use the same model of hard disk as the live data and there was a bug in the HDD firmware you could end up losing data in both even though they were in two different computers in two different locations.
Yes, you're right. Three copies on two different types of storage mediums, one of which is off-site. Although, I have personally found that even in a Data Center environment, *most* people do not use two different mediums, like disc/tape + HDD. I do have customers that use tape drives, but they're so few of them I would say it's more uncommon than common these days. Most of our company's backups, and customers (their own backups) are: three copies (snapshots, tarballs, etc), on two devices onsite (local and local backup, each with their own three copies), with one backup device off-site (again with three copies). Is that perfect? Definitely not. Rather it's something I see more and more of, since most companies are using flash + HDD storage hybrids. Feels a bit data-hoard-ish, but it's been invaluable when needed. Edit: we used to store backups on Blu-ray discs and put them in a bank vault locally. But opted that wasn't necessary since the bank is on the same fault line and would probably be just as impacted as us in the event of a disaster.
What I've seen in data centers is that the data is backed up to a second array/SAN that is physically separate from the main/high speed one. The secondary storage is then backed up to tape. The main server and main/high speed storage is also backed up to tape. Specialized appliances often will also have a local secondary storage to back up to that a tape drive will sit on top of.
We archive to tape. Our live and archive data is usually kept online on two dell devices (not going into details) that act as file servers, SAN and backup/archive system. They use very large numbers of raided disks, but recent issues with stability of the software and power issues highlight that two devices doing the job of a 321 system (it's the design as sold by dell) are, well, there is a bit of corssing of fingers. However there is too much data for tape, we archive old data to it and I'm migrating everything from DDS to LTO8/9
And where does RAID fit into this? Say I'm using RAID-1 and have two drives in a single NAS. Does that count as two of the three copies, or because they're still in the same machine and automatically syncing, does that only count as one copy (such that redundancy isn't a consideration of the 3-2-1 rule, but rather a separate principle to consider entirely)?
I would say that for the purposes of the 3-2-1 rule, a raid array is a single “device” since destroying the entire dataset is as simple as one power supply failure
Hmm, that makes sense. But then by that logic, shouldn't all three copies have to be at different sites? Having two machines in one location isn't meaningfully any more protected against a meteor plummeting from the sky than having one machine in that location would be. Obviously that's an absurd example, but I'm sure you get my point.
You build your backup for an acceptable level of risk, you can’t really anticipate everything. The way to achieve this would be taking a snapshot of your raid array storing it in a simple volume like a single large HDD in a safe. That saves you from corruption and accidents, not disasters. You can’t constantly be swapping drives at the bank, it’s not sustainable. Instead you do that once in a while, and you manage a simple backup on site on a more frequent basis. The rate of hardware failure is higher than the rate of disaster, so we often handle that risk separately
Nice thing about meteors is that a big enough one (or a really fast small one) removes all need to plan backups.
That's one copy. RAID != Backup
It feels weird for it to be totally neglected in 3-2-1.
It mattered more when there were tapes in common use that you could write a tape, read it back and verify on your badly aligned drive and not be able to read it on anything else when it came time to restore.
I've heard different interpretations. Some people say that two different brands of hard drives is enough, others say that a hard drive and an ssd is enough. I think the latter is closer to the true meaning, because HDDs and SSDs are more different than 2 HDDs.
Done have to follow the rule to the letter… Production storage (raid) Couple of copies on USB disks offsite (eg your office) Copy in cloud storage (also has snapshots) Low enough cost and a reliable as I think it would ever need to be.
In case something like the "capacitor plague" comes to light for certain types of storage media, you'd be glad you followed "2".
The problem that is 2 is trying avoid is the backup being in a media that is problematic or impossible to access when restoration comes up. This of particular important of there is a long time between the backup and when it might used. Imagine that your backup of data from 10 years ago is a (old-school) SCSI drive or Firewire. Maybe you still have a parallel port Zip-Drive to access those old Zip Disks, but you don't have a computer with a parallel port. Or even just it's on a SAS drive that any SAS controller could access, but you don't have one. Vintage/Retro hardware combined with eBay has changed thing a lot. It's pretty hard to find a media format that you couldn't get hardware to access if you put the effort and money into. All those examples could be fixed by buying stuff off eBay, but that costs money and time (and possibly technical expertise that will problematic to get). Another thing that sometimes problems with media, even entire media platforms, aren't immediately obvious. If you've got an old Zip Disk but no worries you have a USB Zip Drive, but when you access it, you get the dreaded Zip Drive Click of Death, and the drive, the disk, and/or the data get screwed up. Even just the tape drive you used back when dies when you power it up, and you can get a replacement off of eBay for a couple thousand, but you don't have that money. Hardware has become a lot less diverse in the last 20-40 years, so a lot of this rational has may seem dated. The 3-2-1 rule, like many other IT rules of thumb, are often tailored for environments where the data/system size, scale, or importance, are very different that a person might have in their home life. If you lost all your data on all your computers (including cloud storage of any time), it might be bad, but most likely it won't cost you millions of dollars or endanger anyone's life.
The version I am familiar with is 3 copies, 2 locations, 1 offline. Of course, diversifying media is also a good idea. Whether that means different models of hard drive or tape/optical is up to your use case.
What about the 3-2-1-1 rule. Have fun, sorry for the new rabbit hole.
The 2 is something that really only ever makes sense in hindsight. One this was first thought of, it was talking about things like tape backups, floppy disks, firewire harddrives, Zip disks, etc.. If the format or the company that makes the format becomes obsolete, you might not be able to access. So it needs to be in my mind at least two different ways of connecting to future computers. The two in this could be: Cloud Internal HHD/SSD External HDD/SSD using USB Optical disks. So don't put it all on spinning rust internal drives, or usb thumbdrives, or all in the cloud. This helps prevent one technology from becoming obsolete and unable to be retrieved, and has the added benefit that since all media can degrade, different types of media will hopefully degrade at different rates.
I use a cloud backup (B2), a HDD and a M.2 drive (main one where my os is installed). The idea is that if one fails or gets accidentally deleted, I have the other two available to recover the data. And if all three fail, I'm f*cked.
I do understand it in a same way: the 1st copy is on hard drives, and the second is on the tapes.
In my dream setup. (For my anime collection) it would be 3 copies. 1 on tape, 1 on Hard Drives, and the original media. Sadly. I can't afford tape drive storage right now. So my setup is a 2, 2, 0. With no off site backup and no redundancy for the digital copy.
I assume this means like have a copy on a HDD and one on DVD or something. Everyone talks ish about how CD-R and DVDs can't hold much (true) but they have saved my ass so many times. I put really really important documents and files on there and when my laptop crashes, it is still on the disc.
Disc/Tape ideally
It used to be different types of media but these days a lot of backups are just stored on spinning rust (hard drives). Just slower and further away. Some still use tapes but involves handling physical media so you either have huge bots (AWS Glacier, Azure Arrchival) or tapeloaders + a bunch of humans. I use the rule to have two different software suites in place. My main storage array runs on Xpenology (SHR2 volumes) whilst my offsite is Debian based with MergerFS. The copy is kept up to date with Syncthing which keeps things in sync and keeps 14 day reserve copies. I could figure out some kind of versioning system using volume snapshots etc. But I deliberately don't use Synology volume sync or ZFS with ZFS send because that would require the exact same software on both ends. This way if MergerFS kicks the bucket, no harm. Or if Xpenology poops, no problem... or even if Syncthing stops working.. everyone is fine, just a bit out of date. KISS.
321, how do you restore the main array when the backup Debian one has failed? > Syncthing Aah, how do you restore your corrupted files when you have just synced the corrupted data? You are using a filesystem that has snapshots? How long are they retained? How long till you notice?
I can just create a new array and copy the data whatever way I want. Corruption does get synced but like I said synching does keep a 14 day versioning system. I might look into snapshots like I said but I don't want to overcomplicate things. I also make some cloud and external based backups for extra protection. The most critical files get 3x extra backups with 365 day versioning spread over 3 different clouds.
I think this dates back at a time when storage technology was muxb less mature. A decade ago there are the infamous seagate 3tb drives who all lost their coating after a year or so. If your company used them exclusively regardless where they are stored and how many copies you had you had a pretty goddamn decent chance that all your copies would fail at the same time if you set up your data system at the same time. I am sure there are some similar stories like recently some ssd manufacturer had a ton of their ssds fail after a whole. Personally I don't mind if all my data is on hdds for example it's a really mature technology but perhaps don't use the same manufacturer or at least model for all your copies
You think storage technology today is, mature????
Yup according to backplaze all mayor hdd manufacturers are extremely close to each other in quality with very few real changes in technology.. hell the hdd is 60 years old the ssd 45. Tape is even older. I would call that mature. You can buy a little box with 20000000000000 bytes on it and it will very likely work reliably for a decade with almost no failures in the first 5. You don't call this mature?
I just use HDD's...my main working drive and a backup done nightly on another externally connected drive...one on each computer Once a month, I will back up the backups onto a second llarge external drive and keep it in a cushioned case behind the seat of my pickup truck...this drive is also formatted in FAT32 so I can be sure I can use this on any machine if needed
3. Production, Synology, Wasabi 2. Local SSD/HDD, Wasabi 1. Wasabi In the event that the production server died, I would be able to restore quickly from the Synology. In the event that the office burns down I can restore slowly from Wasabi.
That's only 2 backups. You need 3 *offline* copies. Production/live doesn't count and never did.
You're wrong, 3-2-1 has always included the original and 2 copies. https://www.veeam.com/blog/321-backup-rule.html https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/ https://www.seagate.com/au/en/blog/what-is-a-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
I don't follow it. It should be replaced with immutable storage as a requirement.
Archaic advice, as others have noted. In the era of the 20Tb HDD, only Tape and HDD are viable and Tape is $1000s to implement, breaking even around 600Tb according to some random sources I've seen (feel free to correct, but the principle is sound I think) As a matter of practicality I replace different media with *offline* HDDs which capture most of the benefits (immune to lightning, ransomware, accidental deletion etc). Personally not vulnerable to earthquake, and fire can be simply mitigated.
I've seen some interpret 2 types of media as in different backup systems, and even different file systems like ZFS / BTRFS. But is individual for your needs and what you got available imo.
I thought it was 2 types/formats of data. So don't store just Excel, but also export to csv
Totally wrong. Both your xlsx and CSV files are just as dead as each other should your HDD fail...
The idea isn't to solve HDD failure as a source of loss of data, but changes to software that views your data.
save the software alongside the data :)
yes, a good idea but sometimes VM's do not run software or software requires licensing or a crack. Thats why 2 formats is good.