How to do backup your site?

[zulufox]

I was wondering how the rest of you backup your site?

I keep offline copies of most of my articles, but some more informal ones (site blogs etc.. etc..) have not been backed up.

I through about using a scrapper program to make a static copy of my site just in case the unthinkable (Fire, Earthquake, Tsunami) happens and I lose it, but I wanted to be some insight from you guys first.

How the rest of you backup your site?

[pmkpmk]

We run a CMS, based mostly on a SQL database. There's a daily dump of the database and all the associated files and configurations to a traditional tape streamer. Tapes are stored in a fireproof safe. Backup scheme follows the traditional setting of week- and month rotation (1 tape per day, Friday tape is rotated throughout the month, end-of-month tape is rotated troughout the year). The last 5 backups (two weeks) are also stored as database dumps on the harddrive itself, for easy recovery if you messed something up yourself :-)

[George_hu]

-daily database backup (my own by a popular prg), stored on the server and remote FTP too.
-weekly backup (with a perl script) of them particular user's home DIR also to remote FTP

In my case the remote FTP is 1000km away.

And the hosting company do their own backup as usual.

[freeflight2]

we have a backup server with a 1TB+ storage a couple 1000mls from the main datacenter _pulling_ all the changes once they happen or nightly from the main DC (14 servers):
- a mysql slave replicates all DB changes as they happen
- some 20M photos and other files are getting copied via rsync (transfers only changes)

We also take snapshots every now and then and transfer everything to our office (which takes all weekend long on 2 T1 lines)

The best solution is really to store everything in a 'hotbackup' capable database

[keyplyr]

I manually copy all website files & associated software to DVD using the software that came with my machine. To this I download snapshot of my db and other files that only reside on the server. Takes 20 minutes tops, once a week.

[crescenta]

All my sites are pretty static, so I keep backing them up on CD/DVD every month or so. I do have a small (very very small) blog that I need to back up. I could simply back it up as a static text file if I had to--not my favorite method, but it would suffice, since it's pretty small and not all that profoundly important.

[victor]

Overall
ISP claims to do a daily backup.

Scripts
CGIs and support scripts are in a CMS on my local machine. Simple scripts exist to reload/resync them with the server if it is ever required

Data
It's a dynamic site with about 20meg of data when zipped up.

Every day, I download the changes log. I got scripts that can resync the main database from a set of changes log.

About once a week I zip the whole thing up and download it.

Automatically, once a week, a script zips it up and emails it to a gmail account.

About several times a year, I test the restore/reload processes on another server -- you'd be surprised how many little details that helps iron out before you have to do the whole thing for real with the clock ticking.

[Eterion]

Altho my webhost provides nightly backup service, you can never be too safe when it comes to your hard work!
I manually backup and download my website into both my hard drive AND a ZIP disk every three days.

[killroy]

How do you deal with Apache Logs? Mine get seriously monstrous, withseveral 2GB+ files growing at an alarming rate, and that's excluding image and miscellanous file hits!

SN

[pmkpmk]

Logs are streamed to the tapes as well. I keep the logs of a full year also on CD's (lately DVD's) for easy access to historical data.

btw.: It's being disupted whether this is legal in my country at all. Consumer rights and privacy activists claim that site owners should only be allowed to keep the logs for 30 days, the more hardcore ones among them actually claim that site owners should not even be allowed to log the IP-address at all...

[victor]

Logs I'm not too worried about. I run daily (at least) analyses, and keep the summary files.

The ISP (supposedly) has the backups if I ever need to go back to a raw log. That possibility is good enough for me.

[netguy]

>>How do you deal with Apache Logs?

killroy, we compress our Apache logs daily/weekly/monthly depending on the traffic of the particular virtual domain.

The compressed gz files are then automatically renamed access_log.2005.03.gz, for example, and the regular access_log zeroed out at midnight and ready for the next log period.

The compressed files reduce the file size by 90% or more, so it's much quicker to download locally for log analysis.

As a side note, most Apache configurations I am aware of limit the log file size (per virtual) to slightly more than 2GB, then the server comes to a screeching halt. So you may want to look in to a log compression script to reduce the sizes as soon as possible.

Steve