SaaS and Cloud solutions are very practical. But what happens after a major disaster, for example after the vendor lost all my data? Or disables my access after a “disagreement” or simply following a court or undisclosed security service order? In order to not be caught with the pants down we must implement a solid backup & disaster recovery concept.

But many Cloud and SaaS solutions don’t support full data recovery: During “backup” we lose some data and with the “restore” we even lose functionality. Especially with services that assign primary IDs, it is typically impossible to restore the data onto the same original primary ID.

While not on the forefront of typical DevOps stories, backup and disaster recovery are an important part of “day 2” problems and should be also part of the “DevOps contract” within an organisation.

Schlomo introduces the problem space based on real-world examples and shows solution approaches, how we can still truly own our data and maintain our operational ability to act - even after a major disaster.

See also https://schlomo.schapiro.org/2022/04/mission-impossible-complete-google-workspace-disaster-recovery.html for an example of this problem.