Backup philosophy?

[SJ77]

Hi,

Clearly we all agree that backups are important. But beyond that it's not so clear exactly what that means.

For example How often? Where should back up's live? (locally vs external), How much redundancy is needed? Is RAID and 1 backup enough?  ETC? ETC? ETC?

One such debate can be had regarding a DataBase backup.  The closer to real time your DB backup becomes the less data lost in a catastrophic event. Right? Well not so fast. If corruption to the data base happens, it's likely to also corrupt your backups too. If you're making DB back ups to frequently you could find yourself with a corrupt DB and a corrupt BACKUP.

So I want to hear all about your backup philosophy. Nothing off limits here. Do you backup a live DB? Do you shut down your site temporarily? Or do you simply take a snapshot of the DB and back up from the snap snot.

Where? How? When? How Often? 

Please share your BackUp strategy!!
PS: if you don't have one, you need one.

Thank you 🙂

[Rhett]

The only right answer here is to ensure you have full backups, the frequency and how many you retain will depend on many factors, hosting setup, how busy the site is, how much room you have for backup storage, how critical the site is, if you are doing financial transactions on the site, how often, etc etc.  There really isn't a one size fits all solution when it comes to backups though, they key is to find the proper solution that fits the needs of your site and be ready in case you ever need one.  

 

 

 

[SJ77]

43 minutes ago, Rhett said:

The only right answer here is to ensure you have full backups, the frequency and how many you retain will depend on many factors, hosting setup, how busy the site is, how much room you have for backup storage, how critical the site is, if you are doing financial transactions on the site, how often, etc etc.  There really isn't a one size fits all solution when it comes to backups though, they key is to find the proper solution that fits the needs of your site and be ready in case you ever need one. 

While I don't disagree, Not so much asking for me per se.
Quite interested in simply hearing how others do it and what exactly their strategy is. 

 

[Ramsesx]

1 hour ago, SJ77 said:

Please share your BackUp strategy!!

My provider does daily backups of the database and filesystem and keeps them for 7 days.

[ASTRAPI]

What kind of backups and when it depends from your needs...

To get a backup is one step but not enough.

Where you store it is another important question as i have seen many to get the backups on the same server only and for sure it is not the best practice.

If you use remote backups ensure that the remote backup server connects to the main server and pull your backups so if your site get hacked it will not be possible for the attacker to get in to the backup server.

And the last very important thing that almost 90%+ don't do is to test the backup if it is working or not.

Sorry that i am not replying a lot but i am extremely busy for the moment...

[SJ77]

36 minutes ago, ASTRAPI said:

pull your backups

test the backup if it is working or not.

Such good tips. I figured out both of these things. I am pulling with RSync and not pushing.

Also I backup a live database and use options to do unlocked single transaction backups of the tables into a single Gzip file

Seamless for the users, no down time.

I pull it after it's had enough time to complete by cleverly scheduling my cron requests.  Seems to be working.

Yes, I have tested my restore. Such a smart thing to do. Thanks for sharing. 

[ASTRAPI]

Quote

I am pulling with RSync and not pushing.

It's fine 🙂

[Steph40]

@SJ77I use Akeeba solo and I am very please, i use the pro version for remote backups.

https://www.akeebabackup.com/products/akeeba-solo.html

I make it backup at night and don't have to shutdown. I store backups on s3. Every restore I have tested worked like the original.

[b416]

I have a dedicated server and in my provider's offer there is 100Gb on a ftp server included. 

Daily mysqldump, and tar of the whole /www/forums and /etc.  The ftp server is mounted with fuse, so encrypt and copy there transparently.  

I also have a synology at home, and I pull the same files via rsync.

Bottom line : I have local backups on the server and 2 remote copies at different locations. I keep a week rotation before deleting the old ones.

 

Testing : I regularly update my TESTINSTALL (on a small VM at home) with the files from the production backups. It works flawlessly.

[SJ77]

5 hours ago, b416 said:

I have a dedicated server and in my provider's offer there is 100Gb on a ftp server included. 

Daily mysqldump, and tar of the whole /www/forums and /etc.  The ftp server is mounted with fuse, so encrypt and copy there transparently.  

I also have a synology at home, and I pull the same files via rsync.

Bottom line : I have local backups on the server and 2 remote copies at different locations. I keep a week rotation before deleting the old ones.

 

Testing : I regularly update my TESTINSTALL (on a small VM at home) with the files from the production backups. It works flawlessly.

That sounds like an awesome system. The only question, do you have to manually remove the excess backups weekly? I thought about doing this but I don't want to go on vacation and have my server will up with backups because I'm not there to remove stuff.

[bfarber]

If that was your backup strategy, I'd recommend writing a cron job to clean up old backups.

[b416]

Just now, SJ77

5 hours ago, b416 said:

I have a dedicated server and in my provider's offer there is 100Gb on a ftp server included. 

Daily mysqldump, and tar of the whole /www/forums and /etc.  The ftp server is mounted with fuse, so encrypt and copy there transparently.  

I also have a synology at home, and I pull the same files via rsync.

Bottom line : I have local backups on the server and 2 remote copies at different locations. I keep a week rotation before deleting the old ones.

 

Testing : I regularly update my TESTINSTALL (on a small VM at home) with the files from the production backups. It works flawlessly.

That sounds like an awesome system. The only question, do you have to manually remove the excess backups weekly? I thought about doing this but I don't want to go on vacation and have my server will up with backups because I'm not there to remove stuff.

No, it’s all in a script started by cron, encrypt, backup then remove the files older than 7 days.

[AlexWebsites]

I backup every other day and store backups locally and on amazon AWS. I hold two days of full backups. I also backup the databases (daily) separately. I use WHM backup functions/settings on my server.

[jair101]

I backup my db on a daily (more like nightly) basis in the off hours and also rsync my entire /uploads folder. I am considering making it twice daily. For the db backup I use the current day in the filename, so the backups are overwritten on a monthly basis. 

[SJ77]

7 hours ago, jair101 said:

I backup my db on a daily (more like nightly) basis in the off hours and also rsync my entire /uploads folder. I am considering making it twice daily. For the db backup I use the current day in the filename, so the backups are overwritten on a monthly basis. 

That’s clever! I wonder if it’s possible to use the day of the week so it’s overwritten weekly

[tonyv]

On 3/5/2020 at 1:30 PM, SJ77 said:

Please share your BackUp strategy!!

No idea. I'm hosted by Invision, and in it I trust. Works for me.

(I'm sure that's not the answer you were looking for, but I just wanted to participate. )