"We messed up bad. We launched without having a backup procedure in place, and without the resources to make it happen. This was a hard-learned lesson that won’t happen again. We have no one except ourselves to blame."

You know how you messed up? By not using something like AWS - EC2 - Snapshots. Or even S3 or Glacier. What is this trend of devs doing Operations? As a Sysadmin with a Compsci/dev background, it blows my mind constantly.

Great, you know how to move around the CLI, but are you versed in how to maintain a proper and robust system?

Also, why weren't you using something like SES for your email alerts?