One customer complaint about my 90 day backup plan fixed my whole workflow

Last month a client in Austin told me my backup retention schedule was overkill, said 90 days of daily backups was just wasting their cloud storage money. I argued at first, but then I looked at their actual data and realized 95% of what I was backing up never changed. I switched them to a weekly full with daily incrementals that only keep 14 days, and they cut their storage bill by $60 a month. Now I ask every client about their restore time goals before I set anything up. Has anyone else had a customer push back on something and it actually made the system better?

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felixlane14h ago

The part about "95% of what I was backing up never changed" is where I gotta stop you. That's kind of the point of backups though... you don't keep them for the files that sit still, you keep them for the day something goes sideways and you need that weird version from 60 days ago that you didn't even know you needed. I've had clients say the same thing and then three months later they're asking me to restore something from before the switch, and I have to tell them it's gone because we cut retention to save $60. Sure, ask about their restore goals, but most people don't actually know what their restore goals are until they need something they don't have anymore. There's a reason 90 days is the old school default, it's because it covers a lot of dumb stuff happening.