Everyone says they have backups. Very few have tested one. The difference shows up the first time someone asks you to restore last week — or the first time ransomware asks nicely.
What a real backup system looks like
- ▸Automatic snapshots on a schedule you do not think about
- ▸Offsite storage so one failure does not take the backup too
- ▸Version history, not just the latest copy
- ▸A documented restore procedure — and someone who has done it
The restore test
A backup you have never restored is a rumor. Pick the least busy hour, spin up a scratch server, restore the latest snapshot, and confirm it boots. Do it quarterly. The fifteen minutes it takes is cheaper than the alternative.
When you do not need them
If losing everything costs you nothing, skip the backups and save the money. For everyone else — a Minecraft world people built for months, a storefront, a production database — daily automated backups are the minimum, not the extra.
Every Axro hosting plan ships with daily backups for this reason. We would rather explain a restore than explain why there was no restore to do.
