“If you're not testing your backups regularly, you don't know if you have backups or not. You've got a bunch of crap. It might be a backup. It might not. You won't know until you need to use it.”
2.5 Admins · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · November 2026
Context
His co-host had just said the key lesson was to always test your backups. Jim agrees, and argues that regularly testing ZFS replicas reduces the need for an expensive extra backup chain.
Transcript
…it work? And you go, yep, this all looks good. I've tested it in the ways that I feel like I need to to assure myself this database is not corrupt and I can blow away that VM and I know that was good. And next month or next quarter or whatever your schedule is, you can test it again to make sure.
That's probably the key lesson here. Always test your backups, no matter where you go.
Yeah, I mean, if you're not testing your backups regularly, you don't know if you have backups or not. You've got a bunch of crap. It might be a backup. It might not. You won't know until you need to use it. And if you are testing your backups, the importance of that super expensive, hard to pull off, you know, extra backup that relied on your one ZFS replication at work in the first place, it's not so big anymore, you know, especially when, again, you consider that those ZFS backups, it's not just a backup. Backup each one of those additional chains, it's got archive depth. You know, it's not just…
Right. Well, we better get out of here then. Thank you very much for joining us, Sean. It's been great having you.
Thank you for having me. I'll see you guys next time.
Remember, show at 2.5admins.com if you want to send any questions or your feedback. You can find me at jarrest.com/slash mastodon.
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