Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Business 2.0 mag flunks Backup 101

Business 2.0 is a glossy business & technology magazine owned by Time, Inc. While putting together their next issue, for June, the magazine’s editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work and the backup server failed to back up.


In the New York Times, Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner is quoted as saying: "The night of the crash, our tech guy was here until 4 o’clock in the morning, but the patient died.” Until then, the magazine had never had to rely on its backup server, he said, so no one had noticed that its programming was either obsolete or dysfunctional, or both.

The June issue will still be published. What saved the day? They had emailed all article content to their attoryneys, and had the email attachments, because the mail server didn't crash. Maybe next time they'll also back up their email.