System Backup policy -- tell me what you think of this new company policy

Question

We used to have a company policy that stated that we were to use an automated back up tool to back up the important directories on our workstations to network drives. I was just informed by one of our Architects that we were no longer allowed to backup our workstations to network drives, or even use our network drives. We have been instructed to identify those files that need to be backed up and store those files in MS SharePoint.

I have told a few people outside of my company about this and have recieved the same feedback from all of them.

Please tell me what you think of our new company policy.

Answer 1

SharePoint can be great for documents, but it doesn't sound like this is the correct situation to use it.

Answer 2

Well, are you serious? I think answer is pretty straight forward: that is just stupid.

Answer 3

Sounds like someone bought a new toy and has to justify its cost...

Answer 4

Personally, I'd suggest a source control tool for any backup needs for software. Getting away from scripts is definitely a step in the right direction (only a step because I don't know Sharepoint enough to say if it's the right choice for this).

Backing up source code with a script makes me sad.

:::Cheers for your company:::

Answer 5

Indeed, that would be using SharePoint for what it is not meant to do (i.e. data storage, instead of its primary role: information aggregation to be delivered in one place...).

But perhaps the presence of add-on like Handy backup or some backup and disaster recovery tutorial made them think they could use those process (backup through SharePoint) for all kind of data...

Answer 6

SharePoint is not a backup solution. Not a good one, not a bad one...just not one at all. Any serious backup policy is grounded on having regular automated backups, verifying that the backups work, keeping the backups safe from physical and other threats, etc. SharePoint does not offer any of that functionality, and is not ideally suited for handling all the various things that need to be backed up on a typical developer's machine.

Answer 7

Bucket 'o' fail