Lux Interior asks:
"Help! I am the ad-hoc computer guy in a small satellite office of a larger company. We have no CIO, no IT department, and no policies whatsoever as regards data retention or backup. Therefore, a lot of company property exists one place-- on individual hard drives. The office is made of almost entirely of rudimentary users, on WIN98 and 2000 machines, who never, ever, back up any company information. Has anyone out there had experiences in a small-office setting with: changing users' behavior in regards to managing their data; setting up best practices for backing up information properly; and making sure that the most computer-apathetic users comply with what you've put in place?" Sometimes the best way to make users conform to policy is to not give them a choice in the first place. Automated backup systems on each workstation can go a long way in helping this. Which software packages have such functionality (the more unobtrusive, the better)?
"Several weeks ago we lost six years' worth of extremely important data on current and continuing projects that not even a data recovery service could get back. As a consequence, it is now my job to make sure this doesn't happen again. I have an offsite data storage service retained, but now, how do I get people to back up their files to our file server so I can back up our data from one location? (Also, having the data backed up on our file server of course means that most inadvertent deletions can quickly be fixed in-house).
This is all taking place in a Windows environment, with an NT 4.0 file server, and I am far from an experienced Sysadmin.
Fun, Fun, Fun.
Any input from slashdot readers would be great, and save me much dyspepsia, insomnia, and general hassle."
Slashdot Mirror
Automating backups on workstations, very bad, very difficult. For example, getting people to not turn them off, or even turn off a power bar (wake on lan doesn't work so good in such a situation.) What you do, if you're on NT, is set your system policies so that my documents, all that stuff, is on the server, in their home share. Tell them to put everything on home share. Tell them that anything that's on their hard drive, and lost, will be their responsibility. Explain why they need a central data repository. MAKE DAMN SURE YOUR BACKUPS WORK, OR YOU'LL LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT. Then, if need be, pick a sacrifical lamb. Back up their harddrive, then engineer a 'hard disk failure.' Make sure something important was there, that wasn't properly placed onto the fileserver. This'll drive the point home.
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Create a network drive that everyone can use, H:, the home directory. Usually already set up on networks, but whatever. Tell people that any work related stuff that isn't saved to the H: drive will be deleted.
Warn them a week in advance, warn them a day in advance.
Then, in the middle of the night, format everyone's machines and stick fresh OS installs on all of them. If possible, ghost one machine's fresh install and use it everywhere. Then, the only backup you have to worry about is the H: drive.
If anyone ever has a computer problem, just reghost their drive, removing whatever pointless software (screen savers, comet cursor, kazaa, etc) that got installed and caused the problem.
Minimal hassle for you, easy backups, and everyone will fear you.
[o]_O
I've been in the situation, After an incedent it becomes the flavor of the week until someone whines that it's taking up some of there precious time, then the responsibility gets dumped on you again and everyone stops backing up yet again ...
It's called reactive management,...
Kevin
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Check out Retrospect by Dantz software. We use it for a mixed network of Macs & PC's. Backup occurs automatically from all workstations at administrator defined times. This way, you don't have to "teach" everone to store to a network drive or anything like that.
I don't know about this guys situation, but in some companies it is part of the admins job description to take every reasonable action to force users to "do the right thing". Having them sign a document absolving him/her of guilt would just not cut it. In his case, he should put in place the appropiate software/hardware to implement a backup system and ensure that it is either hard or impossible for users to do the wrong thing. At the absolute very least the workers should be trained on the new/proper procedures (and reminded as appropriate). The idea of a sacrificial lamb mentioned earlier would be interesting, so long as he made sure to have a copy of all the important data first (i.e., I'd fire his ass if he pulled a stunt like that and intentionally destroyed valuable company data).
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