Backups that restore

Everyone has backups. Almost nobody has restores. The difference is whether anyone has ever tried.

What I build

The three-copy rule. The live data, a copy on site on separate hardware, and a copy off site. Losing any one of them is an inconvenience, not a loss.
Nightly, automatic, and quiet when it works — and loud when it doesn’t. A backup that fails silently is the one you find out about on the worst day.
Verified by restoring. A backup job saying “success” is a receipt. I prove a backup by restoring it somewhere harmless and opening the files. I do this when I hand a system over, and on a schedule afterwards if you keep me on.
A written recovery plan — what to do, in what order, on a page you could hand to someone else.
Retention you understand. How many days, how many weeks, how far back you can go, written down where you will find it.

I don’t back up to a service you cannot get your data out of, and I don’t call something a backup if it lives on the same disk as the original.

Where it starts

Tell me what you have and what worries you. If what you need is really a house call, I'll say so and point you at My Computer Therapy instead.