Recovering a file from Backup

Earlier today I've received a call from one of my users asking to recover a file from backup. He explained that last week's power shutdown caused some files mess up in his home directory.
Blame it on the network, that's the way to go!

I wrote down the file name and exact path and loaded Backup Exec's Restore wizard. Looking at all my weekly full backups I found the Friday prior to the power shutdown and restored the file he was looking for. He wasn't happy.

The explanation I received was that "the system" saved a second copy of that file under a different name!
I had to insist it is not possible since systems do not save files or rename them and no other user has access to the home folder of that user.
More to the fire he claimed that the recovered file is older then the one he was looking for. At this point I had to ask him how does it relate to the power shutdown if whatever happened more then a week earlier???

Went back to Backup Exec and located the file from previous week where the creation date and modified date where exactly identical, similar to the date he created the file. That file also was "wrong".

At this point I innocently suggested that he might have saved it in a different location. 10 minutes and a long lecture on his methodical file organization system later he called again: He found the file under a different folder.

One technical tip I want to share from my experience this morning relate to the recovered file.
I did not want to recover the file to the original location (and by now you understand why). I usually recover files to the local disk at c:\BE_Recovery
When the recovered file come from a home folder the NTFS permissions are still in affect and you can't access it.
In order to see the files at \\Home\DomainName\Username, copy them to any other location or delete the folder and files when you're done, you have to do 2 things:
Add the domain admin with modify permissions
Allow permission inheritance to sub folders

My Tractor Story (aka ASA)

This is my personal Tractor Story…

Remember how my firewall died?
The next morning around 10am Fedex arrived with the new box.
I opened the box and wondered if it is the hardware or the power cable. It was the hardware. Not even 2 years old piece of hardware just lost it.
I copied the config (finally all those tedious Cisco backups pay back!) and it looked fine. Easy. Maybe too easy.
I wanted to use this opportunity to upgrade my software version from 7.2(3) to 8.2(1) and also upgrade the ASDM (which is the GUI console for PIX\ASA). I usually avoid major changes at these situations but how often you get your production firewall offline for such a job?
Reading all about the upgrade it looked like a straight forward upgrade where none of the configs will be affected. To make sure it is as easy as it looks I called TAC and they told me the same thing: copy the software, reload, good to go. So I did.
Reloading the software was easy, quick and worked just fine. Would it be a short happy afternoon?
Afterhours arrived and it’s time for switching. When I finished all adjustments on the network (remove the backup firewall, change back the D\G and cabling) I started testing with one of my out of network colleagues. She was happy about everything but the VPN.
I was looking and searching and found few missing lines. Copying those lines prompt errors. So WTF is wrong? Took me a while to figure it out (how could I not remember? Because I only did it once when I bought the ASA and never again): the Activation Key was missing hence all the Security Plus features didn’t work and the related config failed to load. Lost few hours for the reminder.
At that point I had to reload all the missing configuration that now loaded like a charm. Line by line I got everything back to work and finished this task successfully.
The only thing I still do not understand is the way Cisco handle this. You guys do it everyday with thousands of clients. When you send me a new box you know I’ll have to reload the Activation Key but even more important, you know that the key I received with the original box will not work. Why don’t you automatically create a new key and email it so when the box is here I’ll be able to use it???

Backup. The Click then Think based industry

The other day one of my users went on a private vacation to Rome. While sitting in JFK he lost his thumb drive which contained an important report he was working on. The security was no problem in this case but there was something much more important – he already spent 5 working days on this report and he saved it all on his thumb drive. He never thought about keeping a copy on the network. He didn’t email it to anyone or to himself (one of the growing backup methods)
The only leftovers from the report where one paper copy and his thoughts. I ended up OCRing his paper report and was able to recover most of the text. It was few days old and he spent hours updating it. He also had to rebuild his diagrams as they also only existed in the original file.
The end of this story was relatively good but it emphasizes the need for a good backup system where technology covers people’s action.

My first day in the industry I’ve been told by an expert consultant: if you do not know what is going to happen after you click, do not click!
That would be a Think then Click
For some reason this fortune cookie simple piece of advice never reached the world of common users and they use the Click then Think attitude.
Today’s world has zero tolerance to data loss.
That is good because we spend hours working on a document, a piece of software or an important email and then with one click it is all lost
That is bad because our users know they can be reckless and get away with it. Just because the company spend money on backups

Backup is getting more and more attention and spending on equipment and software is growing. Some of my corporate colleagues have a Backup Specialist positions, yes – it is an administrator that does only backup related job.
So what exactly make this niche industry became so important?
Like many other cases it is the user’s fault…