FWIW, this is still an ideal model for backup storage: If your more regular backup model is robust and your network is well-secured, you'll never need retrieval. And if you need it, you need it, and it's justifiable to spend big to save your business.
I'd be confident with periodically testing just little random parts.
For me this is a "last resort backup", costs little to keep around, and god-forbid we ever need it. BUT that means we need to account for the case were we do need it! And if it's going to cost too much then there's no point in the backup anyway.
I would generally agree. First of all, you're going to test a lot of your restore processes with backups which are closer to home: You should make sure your VMs can all restore from your onsite (or just less icy) backups, for instance. As long as you're confident in that, the only thing you need to test with "ice cold" storage is that you can successfully restore a single VM from it, since you know all of your VMs can be restored.
Same here. As a company you can go "we need this to save our asses, I don't care if it costs $50k in a 4 person company", but personally I kind of do care about the cost for retrieval...
I've been comparing cloud storage prices to hard drive prices for years now. My first thought when seeing the storage prices was "huh, that might actually be worth it", but depending on the retrieval costs, you might still want to roll your own no matter the storage costs. For private use, I am (was?) planning a variant of this as soon as I am finished doing a server migration: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/7rjcdn/home_ma...
It's your backup, not your primary system. The odds that more than one drive fails within the same, say, week, is probably perfectly acceptable for most people.
