Useless backups
I remember a new fairly large contract, where during due diligence, we were proudly shown a huge portacabin on site that was full of rusty steel cupboards packed full with various types of tape media. Not one of them was in the plastic box that protected from dirt and dust - since that took up space.
There was no environmental control of the portacabin and none of the tapes had any labels or barcodes giving any indication of what system they were from, what date they were created, what software was used or anything that might help in working out what treasures they may have contained.
We also learned that only a small volume of the tapes were active and the admins picked the tape they thought was next and used that, which might have been OK if there was some form of reliable rotation other than "pick one".
Obviously, no test restores had ever been done as everyone was too busy.
It was an interesting discussion point in the resulting report about the lack of any usable backups and one of the first tasks was to sort out that mess.
Anon for obvious reasons !
Biting the hand that feeds IT
