tl;dr
There will be approximately 60 minutes of downtime tonight at 11 PM Pacific Time while I perform an annual test of the backup & restore process by rebuilding the servers from their backups.
Why?
It is best practice to perform a complete restore of the server from backups at least once a year in order to verify that the restore process is still working, so that in the very rare chance of a catastrophic event in the future, we can be confident in the backup and restore process. This is a critical part of any "Disaster Recovery" plan. Companies have been bit by not testing their backups before and unable to restore, so I want to avoid any of those situations and follow the industry-wide best practice.
A virtual "snapshot" of the server will be taken prior to the maintenance time, so in the incredibly low chance that the regular restore process fails, I will then use the snapshot to restore from instead.
There will be no loss of data! Everything will be safe.
Expected Impact
I anticipate approximately 60 minutes of downtime. I will keep this maintenance event updated as I progress through it tonight.
Questions? Concerns?
If there are any concerns with the timing of the maintenance window or if you have any questions at all, please reach out to me via email: dustin@d19.ca