Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Survey

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Jun 19, 2019 at 5:06 PM Patrik Dufresne <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm running a survey about backup software to learn more about what people
> are using to do their backup and why they are using it. I invite individual
> and business to answer the survey.
>
> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HKKDG2J


Regarding your survey, I would have a few observations:

* (1) in the first question, you could have provided a few more
options (including `rdiff-backup`) since you're sending this email to
its mailing list;

* (3) in the third question about "what you are looking for in backup
software", some items don't actually make sense for a "backup
software" and seem to pertain more to a "backup cloud provider";  for
example "high availability" or "low cost per GB" or "end-to-end
encryption";

* (3) still with the third question, the "secure" option is too
vague...  do you mean "secure" as in "privacy", "secure" as in
"redundancy", or as in "integrity"?

* (7) the operating system selection, should allow one to choose more items;

* I think you are missing a few important items, like:
** what does one "backup"?  is it a file-system, is it a "raw"
block-device, or is it a "dump" file or something similar;
** does one implement "incremental backups", or all individual backups
are "full";
** does one implement "backup rotation";
** where does one store "offsite backups"?  is it S3 (or something
similar), is it a "backup provider", or something else?
** does one use (or wants to use) write-only media?  (although these
days even a BlueRay disk is quiet small compared to current data
sizes, it might be an interesting option;)
** does one automate these backups?  (or are they executed manually?)
** how often does one try to recover from the backups?  (to make sure
they are "usable");

(These are just a few questions I had, when I decided to use `rdiff-backup`.)


(I've submitted your survey, however I find the questions somewhat
unsuitable for obtaining some actual insights.)
(Also as the previous email asks, I hope you'll make your findings public.)

Ciprian.