Top 5 tips for successful Zero Failure Policy

1. Eliminate the Problem, Not the Error
A company providing backup services for its customers established a zero error policy towards backups, promising customers that their backups would be error free. Unfortunately, the way in which “error free” was achieved was less than desirable. Instead of determining the nature of each error, steps were taken to simply eliminate the error. For example, whenever a file was reported as being inaccessible during backup due to it being opened, the administrator simply added that file to the list of files to be excluded during backups. For at least one server this was a disaster, as the host was a Web server that kept files opened for a period of time after they had been accessed by users. This resulted in a server that could not be restored when it failed, as critical files were deliberately excluded from the backup process as a means of reducing the errors involved in backup

2. Focus on improvement
Always record carefully every day to day activity and make sure that every action is remediated and logged properly.

3. Gather customer respond effectively

4. Perform routine backup and maintenance

5. Always aim for the best zero failure state

Source: "Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy" p256-257, Preston de Guise.