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House of the Forge • Simulation

Backup or Bust

A Sysadmin Disaster Survival Simulation

Mission Brief

You're the new sysadmin at Hexworth Industries. Your predecessor was fired for "storing backups on the same server being backed up."

You inherit a 2-server fleet that will grow to 5 as the company expands. Each day, allocate your limited backup budget wisely. Disasters are coming. How much data survives depends entirely on the choices you make right now.

Token Budget
Each day you receive 3–5 backup tokens. Spend them on backup operations before committing the day.
Disaster Events
~40% chance of a disaster each day, rising with difficulty. When it hits, your backup chain determines survival.
Backup Types
Full (3T), Differential (2T), Incremental (1T), Test Restore (1T). Each has different RPO/RTO tradeoffs.
Data Integrity
Starts at 100%. Each unrecovered disaster drains it. Reach 10 days with integrity intact to win.
Server Fleet
CHOOSE BACKUP ACTIONS
Scheduled for today
No actions queued. Budget unspent tokens accumulate as savings.
Tokens remaining: 0
Final Rank
A
Data Integrity: 0%
0
Disasters
Survived
0
Backups
Performed
0
Data Loss
Events
Mission Debrief
▸ Full backups are expensive but provide a single-step restore with the lowest RTO. Use them as your foundation.
▸ Incremental backups save storage and tokens, but a broken chain means partial or no recovery.
▸ Test restores validate your backup chain. An untested backup is an assumption, not a guarantee.
▸ The 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies, 2 different media types, 1 offsite. Ransomware encrypts online backups too.
▸ RPO vs RTO: RPO is how much data you can afford to lose. RTO is how fast you must recover. Both require planning before the disaster.
CRITICAL ALERT
Drive Failure
All Clear
No disasters today. Your preparation paid off.