$200K+ data protected, RTO: 45 minutes, RPO: zero data loss
E-commerce / Automotive Parts
2 weeks (emergency) + ongoing monitoring
Backup Setup & Verification (Fixed-Price), Infrastructure Management
6 months of silently failing backups discovered during a critical database corruption
$200K+ data protected, RTO: 45 minutes, RPO: zero data loss
A large regional e-commerce platform for auto parts — serving 150,000+ registered customers with a catalog of 30,000+ SKUs — learned the hardest lesson in IT: backups that aren't verified aren't backups at all.
For years, the platform operated with an 'automated backup system' configured through their server's control panel. Every night at 2:00 AM, a cron job ran mysqldump and saved the output to a /backups directory on the same server. Files appeared. They were large (several gigabytes). The business owner checked occasionally and felt secure. Nobody ever tested whether those files could actually restore a working database.
A perfect storm struck: a routine plugin update went wrong, introducing a SQL injection vulnerability. Within hours, an automated bot exploited it, partially corrupting and encrypting the database. The site went down immediately. The team attempted to restore from the previous night's backup and discovered the horrifying truth: for the last 6 months, every backup file was either empty or contained only table headers. A MySQL version update six months prior had changed file permissions, causing mysqldump to fail silently — the cron job still ran, files were still created, but they contained no usable data.
• Site offline for 48 hours while the team scrambled to find any recoverable data. • Loss of 6 months of business-critical data: customer orders, payment records, inventory changes, pricing updates, and new customer registrations. • 150,000+ customers unable to track their orders, check delivery status, or access their accounts. • Financial impact: approximately $5,000 per day in lost sales, plus an estimated $50,000 in customer service costs to manually reconstruct order records. • Reputational damage: social media complaints, negative reviews, and loss of trust from wholesale partners. The in-house system administrator attempted recovery using various data recovery tools but could only salvage approximately 60% of the data — with no guarantee of its integrity.
The client engaged Optimum Web's Backup Setup & Verification service as an emergency intervention.
Implemented a defense-in-depth backup strategy designed to eliminate every single point of failure:
This is where Optimum Web's approach fundamentally differs from standard backup solutions:
The most dangerous backup is one that appears to work but doesn't. Silent failures — caused by permission changes, version upgrades, or disk space issues — can go undetected for months. The only reliable solution is automated verification: regularly restoring backups to a test environment and proving they work. This $149 fixed-price service protected over $200,000 in business data and transformed a reactive disaster response into a proactive, verified recovery system.
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Every project is unique, but the problems often aren't. If this case study resonated with your situation, let's discuss how we can help.
