I always felt that in case of a crash like this, an advantage of a P2P set-up was the ability to make a relatively easy switch like this without an immediate need for new hardware (and the inherent delay and cost that would entail). This proved to be true.
Well you knew I would be the first to respond. As backups are one of my favorite topics.
First, thank you Jon for sharing this with the rest of us. It is very helpful...very much to me as well. Everyone used to make fun of me because I have this backup program which backs up the entire server (now the VMs) nightly to multiple places. It does send an email daily with the result of the backup. But, I never scheduled the .enc backup, nor our billing software or our 3rd party programs which work with AC. I always do those manually and watch them finish. Obviously, people with imports within their application could have difficulty. SQL Express 2012 also has its own .bak file.
One of the things that kept the old board hopping were the battles that went back and forth between P2P and client/server based setups. The overall benefits and downsides to both notwithstanding, this is related solely to the risk/benefits of backups. I am not quite sure why a P2P setup would be beneficial other than providing another computer to run from. But, that could be done easily enough with a server. But, I can see where if someone were not using a server with another computer or server to failover to (which essentially is what Jon did minus the advantages of an automatic failover).
I have learned a lot from Jon's sharing this and how well AC support was able to help very quickly. And, the steps he took to fix it. I am not writing this to critique his setup. It does sound like there was a lot of thought put into the backup plan. And, I am sure there are many out there with no backup plan. I have often wondered why there are no others sharing experiences like this. There must be many others. I had a serious crash of my server once and fortunately I had backups with Veeam, which did require a phone call to them for help.
Finally, I think there are three groups. Those with no or a poorly thought out backup program. Those like Jon and me who have good backup setups. There is a third group whose backup plan would be more costly but value their overall data over their inability to understand and set up a good backup plan. There are third party IT companies who don't need to take over your overall system but are dedicated to the backup of your system including on premise, locally to their servers. They would monitor backups were done daily and test them weekly. Of course, you would need a BAA, if that is the correct term. Finally, the only good backup is one that is tested to see if it actually works.
But, as stated, this may sound strange, but I am proud of Jon for getting his system back up so quickly and sharing his story with the rest of us.
Just my three cents worth. I don't think I have ever given two cents worth.
At Jon, I hope I am not offending you -- just adding some things that Indy and Sandeep would have added as well as James.
