hi guys, i have a few hosting accounts and run a few sites. it's nothing major but i do plan on expending and adding a few more sites. i was wondering how you backup your servers and stuff that's on your local drive? do you use external HDs, do you use online storage or simply keep in on the server? appreciate your input!
It's always recommended to store the account backup at remote location so that you can restore the backup in case the server hardware fails or drive gets corrupted. Keeping backup on same server will eatup your precious space if the size of backup is huge.
Adisolutions, There are at least 2 places where backups of your account should be stored: 1. Your hosting company. Can be secondary HDD on the same server for monthly/weekly/daily backups. Remote location backup is a plus. It's a good idea to ask your hosting provider about their backup scheme. 2. Your own storage. Generally it's HDD in your PC. However it's better to have at least 1 copy on second/external HDD as well. You should periodically renew the backups. How often - depends on the site type, data update frequency, etc. If your backups have to be renewed frequently, then it's better to setup an automated "Hosting server -> Local PC -> External HDD" backup scheme.
Daily, I rsync all my data to a remote host on the other side of the country. This protects it from hardware failures and natural disasters.
ok - appreciate your feedback. i already have one external hard drive and i believe i'm going to get one more just so i have two of them. both of the external hd are going to be stored in two different locations. do you guys have any preferences when it comes to external hds? thx
just use this service from your hosting provider ...I think most of the Premium Hosters provide this service..Even you can try mnchost.com which provide R1softbackup and Personal BackUp Daily If this is not possible,i personally recommend to take backup in zip format and place in any file hosting website ..rapidshare /etc ..
cPanel has a great backup feature that allows FTP backup. You should also make sure your backup files are secure. You would not want someone to randomly come across your zip file that contains your SQL database after all
Usually most hosts will take backup of your account if you avail that service from them. Else you can take the backup for yourself. Since the server is in remote location you can store the backup on your servers hard-disk. If a hard-disk failure occur, the data will be lost. Hence you can transfer the backup in your server's hard-disk using ftp to your local computer or an external hard-disk. Hope this helps
For server backup, rsync to a remote a location. If it is sensitive material, ensure to rsync over SSH and that the data is encrypted while it is being stored. For home desktop backup, you can use backup services like Mozy or Carbonite for a small recurring fee.
Presently, I use cPanel backup and download the files to my computer. I used to back up via FTP to Amazon S3, but the service making that possible closed. I'm still looking for a good solution to do that again. There are also other possibilities, e.g. http://www.dropmysite.com, and similar services.