Backups

Backing up your website.

[seo sitemaker]

Just wondering what different people are doing to backup their websites?

Backing it up to a separate server, to your computer, not at all? What do you use?

Thanks.

[LifeinAsia]

I keep the most recent backup on the server, with a copy of the most recent and second most recent on an external drive. Ditto for the DB server.

I keep the most recent on the server so that I don't have to spend the time copying from the external drive if I need to do a restore.

The external drive is in case the server crashes and I don't have access to the server's hard drives.

[lammert]

Daily full backup of everything except operating system specific files to a separate server on another continent. Besides that, all website source files are maintained in a SubVersion repository.

A separate "empty" webserver is standby in another data center with a fully pre-configured LAMP stack. If the main webserver crashes, the latest backup from the backup server is downloaded to that server and with a DNS swap the sites are in the air again, with a maximum one day gap in the database files.

[bill]

Nightly batch files and cron jobs will dump and zip my databases and then FTP will place backups on several machines. I also regularly download copies of the entire server contents, but not daily.

[MichaelBluejay]

My host does automatic backups to another machine (which has saved me more times than I can remember), but it's always a good idea to have your own copy, too. Yesterday I wrote a script to copy and zip up all the files in a domain, except those over 200k. (You know the idea about 10% of the files taking 90% of the space.) Yeah, I'd like to have a full backup, but it would take forever to download, so I at least get most of my files this way.

[jecasc]

My host does automatically back up files and database and I can request the backuped files for up to three days at any time. In addition I have a cronjob that runs "mysqldumper" once a day to backup my database automatically on the server. Then I have set Cobian Backup to automatically transfer all files on the server - including the database backup - to a computer in my office.

[seo sitemaker]

Thats an interesting idea. So does the db backup get overwritten every day then?

When you back it up to your office computer, do you overwrite every time or keep a few versions?

Care to share how you setup your cronjob?

[gouri]

If you cannot use FTP on your site, can anyone mention some ways that a site can be backed up?

Thanks.

[phranque]

if the files aren't too large you can send them as email attachments.

[dpd1]

One copy on the comp, one on a disconnected ext. drive, then the copy on the server. It would take a nuclear war to get rid of all those.

I've had a problem backing up a member gallery area though. It's become huge and refuses to download through FTP without cutting out. Host sent me around in circles and has yet to come up with a viable solution. Their backup system through the server doesn't work either. So I'm flying without a parachute right now on that part.

[cmendla]

I'm moving all of my sites and my client's sites to Joomla. There is a free extension that will create a package that you should be able to plop into another server if necessary (not sure if I can mention the name here. Sticky me if you want details).

I don't think it can be run as a chron which means my level of backup is dependant on me actually getting into the control panel and running the backups

[maximillianos]

We do daily backups to a remote secure server of our database files and website scripts, config files, etc.

Once a month we take local downloads of everything.

My backups have come in handy more than once.

[Swanny007]

I keep a local copy of the files on the web server on my local HD. My HD is backed up to an external drive. I have nightly cron jobs that gzip the databases, and a script on a local PC to connect via FTP every night and grab the files. They go into a folder with the day's date. So I have nightly backups for about the last 30 days of the databases. Works great, simple, reliable. Oh, and I also use a script that emails me to confirm the backup to the local PC worked, so when I wake up I know right away by email if it worked.

[seo sitemaker]

Wow, some of you are pretty creative. Any of you care to share your code?

I like your setup Swanny007.

[jecasc]

Thats an interesting idea. So does the db backup get overwritten every day then? When you back it up to your office computer, do you overwrite every time or keep a few versions? Care to share how you setup your cronjob?

I use "Mysqldumper", this is a free php/perl tool for backing up mysql databases. Just do a search on google. Once you have configured it on your server all you have to do is execute it with a cronjob and you have your whole database as zip files on your server.

Cobian Backup is an Open Source Backup Tool with FTP support. You can install it on your local computer and then simply schedule a backup for the zip files, so they are transfered to your local computer.

I usually keep the last 7 days plus every two weeks Saturday backup.