Backup site?

Ryan · VIP

In the event there's a major malfunction with your website, is there some sort of backup service in the event things get pretty serious?

Sometimes people either don't have the resources to instantly restore the chaos, or they forget to try and make a backup of their site, making a crash all the more devastating.

Is there a Plan B or are you pretty solid in terms of restoring your community?
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Patrick · Administrator

Right now, my plan would be basically to restore my own backups. I have the live copy, I have a server based copy, a copy on my hard drive (done every 2 days) and then a copy of that one on my backup hard drive. So, theoretically, even if it gets to the one on the backup hard drive, I'll lose less than 3 days data. That's not great, but it's decent for a low budget system, I think.
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Ryan · VIP

For low budget you'd think you work for the NSA with that setup! Laughing

I never thought about having it copy on my hard drive automatically, that sounds like an efficient method. Any real drawbacks? Smile

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faulksie · Posted: 2/2/2009, 7:04 am Post subject:

I keep an exact copy of each of my websites files, as they are on the servers, on my hard drive and also a copy on an external hard drive and update these as and when any changes are made.

Backups of database files are made, at the minimum, on a daily basis, copies are also kept on an external hard drive.

I also regularly test my database backups by restoring them to a test site.

Patrick · Administrator

Good stuff, faulksie. You are smart!

No, there aren't any drawbacks, Ryan, as long as you have the computing power. Here's a quick breakdown on cost, excluding your computer, hosting bill, etc. Smile

The live copy is the one that is actually in use on your site.

Following this is the server based copy, which is run daily, weekly and monthly. Many hosts offer this, but as an non-guaranteed backup. In other words, they don't want to be legally responsible for having one. If you have a dedicated server, you can set your own server based backup, as well. It should be to a separate drive on the machine as having it on the same one kind of defeats the purpose.

I also have the server export an .sql file automatically everyday. This is through CPanel.

I then use CuteFTP 7 Home ($44.99), which is an FTP program that has a scheduling feature. I have it set to download the .sql file from the sevrer and to my hard drive every 2 days. I do it every 2 days because it takes bandwidth and computing power. I could probably get away with once a day on the computer I have now, though.

I then have a 750 GB external HD. It's one of the Western Digital Passport ones. You can get a 1 TB one for $126.85 on Amazon.com. I use SyncBackSE ($30) to automatically backup the database and all of my files regularly (every 3 hours, weekly, monthly on even and odd months). I got this from the Lifehacker book.

And that's it. You'll notice that the key to all of this is that it's automated. A backup system based on manual action is doomed to fail because there could always be that time where you can't do it. SyncBack sends me an e-mail and puts up an error message if anything goes wrong with the backup.

And it is low cost, too. The two software apps and the external HD (which have other uses than just for this purpose) all cost about $200 and that's it. No monthly fees, etc. So, I think it's a decent system. Smile

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Patrick
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Ryan · VIP

If I ever get to the point where I should be backing things up I'll definitely keep this in mind. Thanks Patrick! Smile

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eplebiten · Posted: 2/3/2009, 9:44 am Post subject:

Truestar: You're not backing up? Seriously? You should always make backups of your websites and databases. You'll never know when something might happen, and you should never rely on your host for any backups.

For myself I use the following:

I use BQbackup.com for external backups of all sites (1TB plan), I use RAID1 on all servers with 2 HDDs, and RAID60 on the database server. I also have a server with dual 1TB HDDs in RAID1 where all my backups are first made, and then this server will send me one backup via rsync for local storage (, this backup will also be copied to my own backupsolution at home on tape) at home, and it copies all backups to BQBackup. So I have a total of 3 sources where the backup will be stored. At my home, a server on a different DC, and at BQBackup.

I have daily backups of DBs and files/images, and weekly and monthly backups of all accounts on my servers.

You can never have enough backups. I've even experienced that both HDDs on a server (of course in RAID1) failed, so RAID is not a backup. It just gets you a little more protection.
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Patrick · Administrator

For years, I didn't have good backups because I was on dialup and it just wasn't feasible to download a 200 MB database. But, when I moved to high speed, it became a reality. Those were scary times, though. I remember when I had phpBB 1 and people were hacking one of my sites every few days, wiping the DB clean. I made it through, though.

Patrick
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Ryan · VIP

eplebiten, none of my sites are technically launched yet, so backing up for me is a rare thing right now. I have a copy of all files on my computer, but only backup my databases maybe once a month for the heck of it. Smile

Thanks for the website suggestion, I'll keep that one in mind too. Smile

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glorified j · Posted: 2/5/2009, 6:40 pm Post subject:

I recently ran a mod on my phpBB3 database that saves a database file daily. It saves it to a folder on my server, which obviously isn't failsafe, but at least it's a daily backup. I have a heck of a time remembering to create backups myself ( and I have 3 forums! ), so it's nice to know that there's a file being kept someplace. There is an additional mod to have the db emailed to me, but I'm not that concerned yet. I suppose I'll have to be bit before I learn my lesson.

I also do weekly, emailed database backups on my 2 wordpress blogs.
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