Gilles Chehade
On Arrested DevOps
“A big part of the cloud era is that we have an assumption that cloud providers store backups. That the bucket is a backup. It's not the case. And it's not uncommon that you actually lose something there. It's just that there are so many users that the stats are biased: it happens to no one. But when it happens to you, you're going to be very sorry if you don't have copies.”
Arrested DevOps · Software Engineering & Infra · November 2026
Context
Matt Stratton asked for the one thing listeners should remember about data protection. Gilles Chehade says to keep backups whatever tool you use, and says he has seen companies close after losing the only copy of their most critical data.
Transcript
Yeah, but we have one for Microsoft Active Directory. Active
…and say, like, okay, cement this and you know, tattoo it on the inside of your eyeballs about thinking about your data protection. What's what's the thing that that people should should go? You know, first thing is go check out Plaque R, but you know, for sure. Yeah, of course. Secondly, after you
secondly, is really to take this into consideration that you should have like, regardless of PlaqueR or anything else, you should have your backups because I have a lot of horror stories. I'm not sure here, but I've seen companies close because they lost the wrong copy. They had no copy for the most critical part. That has happened. And that it happened to a lot of people around me. And I'm just one guy. So I'm sure if you ask around you, you will find people that will tell you they lost something. And a big part of the cloud era is that we have an assumption that cloud providers store backups. The trusty buckets is a backup. It's not the case. And it's not uncommon that you actually lose something there. It's just that there are so many users that you see the stats are being biased. Like it happens to no one. Yeah, but when it happens to you, you're going to be very sorry if you don't have copies. So you should actually do an assert assessment of your data, be it your pictures on Google Photo or your personal bucket and stuff. And just wonder what would happen if I lost that. How depressed would I be? And that should be enough to tell you, okay, I should…
I feel like that's sort of the key. And so much in the consumerification where that comes in and people think about, and just even at the consumer level, and even us as technologists probably misunderstanding. I mean, I had a conversation with my ex the other day. She's like, I don't understand why…
a false sense of security and a sense of not losing your data. But people who have lost them have been feeling very sorry about this because they write it. They're right. We are not going to back up your data. Share responsibility. You have to do your backups because we can't necessarily restore.…
Fantastic. So everyone, if you head over to arresteddevops.com/slash modern backups, that will have this episode show notes with lots of helpful links. And if you visit arresteddevops.com/slash iTunes, you can leave us a review in the Apple Podcast Store. That helps other people find the podcast. I…
More from Arrested DevOps
