How often and how are backups done at HR?

[brianlees]

With the recent loss of 8 months of data on this forum, I would like to have a better understanding of how HR performs backups and how often.

[Brendan]

In this particular case backups were being done to another location on the same machine on another partition which ended up apparently being sym-linked to the same location as the original, so when the partition went they were both lost. This is basically a case of human error on our part.

-Brendan

[y6y6y6]

I don't think I've ever worked for an organization that hasn't had major errors wigth data backups. Meanwhile my personal backups have been 100% bulletproof for the last 10 years.

The difference is that I do mine manually, redundantly, and with distrubuted storage. Seems like it would be worth it to have someone manually run the backups and create remote copies. Especially with all the data lost in the last week.

I'm a happy customer, but I'll sure never trust HR with my backups. And that's got to be pretty bad PR.

[Brendan]

The problem with manual backups on a setup of our scale is its like a multiple person full time job at that point.

-Brendan

[HRTimothy]

I assure you that we had what we felt was a perfectly adequate backup system with numerous safeguards in place. Somethings things do happen and we can use what we have learned to improve and redevelop our strategies to try to ensure something such as this doesn't happen again.

[y6y6y6]

Understood. And I'm sure you know your business better than I do. But it seems like this problem is endemic to web hosts. "Yes, we do nightly backups. But they weren't getting done right. So we lost 9 months of data."

If a web host can lose 9 months of their own data one has to think that there is something fundamental that they are doing very wrong.

When all the data got lost on host 58 it made me very happy that I'd been so anal about backing up my own data. Just the thought that I could lose 9 months of my own data has led me to triple check everything on a regular basis.

I'm not trying to put you down, it's just that this problem with backups seems so widespread that it's always mystified me. It seems like the trust associated with backups would be so important that it would get triple checked regularly. if a server gets hacked or someone on a shared server eats up all the resources, I'll understand, that's part of the business. But my whole website is basically just the data. If you lose my data you've lost my website.

[HRTimothy]

Understood on our end as well. We appreciate your feedback. Just let us know if you have any other concerns or need anything.

Originally posted by y6y6y6
Understood. And I'm sure you know your business better than I do. But it seems like this problem is endemic to web hosts. "Yes, we do nightly backups. But they weren't getting done right. So we lost 9 months of data."

If a web host can lose 9 months of their own data one has to think that there is something fundamental that they are doing very wrong.

When all the data got lost on host 58 it made me very happy that I'd been so anal about backing up my own data. Just the thought that I could lose 9 months of my own data has led me to triple check everything on a regular basis.

I'm not trying to put you down, it's just that this problem with backups seems so widespread that it's always mystified me. It seems like the trust associated with backups would be so important that it would get triple checked regularly. if a server gets hacked or someone on a shared server eats up all the resources, I'll understand, that's part of the business. But my whole website is basically just the data. If you lose my data you've lost my website.

[VENCO]

This only proves to show that no matter what other people say keep your own backups as well. HR offers a daily backup in the control panel, take advantage of it. Or if you don't want to use that at least keep a copy of what you are working with on your computer already. This is what I do:

Copy everything you have on HR onto your computer. Make it a backup and then copy that folder to a working folder. Do all your work in the working folder, and after each month, rotate the working folder to the backup folder. Then you always have a backup in your working folder AND in your backup folder (best to do on separate hard drives methinks).

[KLH]

This kind of stuff scares me, when I see others lose their data. So I went through on the 29 and made backups of all the important stuff.
I am on dialup, and downloading the Daily Backup from the control panel would take well over 12 hours, because of the number of files that I have uploaded onto my account. I might have to take my laptop over to my brothers house every month just to get on his cable connection, and download the daily backups just to be safe.

And most of the stuff I do have backups of, but it is the stuff that uses MySQL databases that I cannot keep a copy of on my computer, or always have the latest version.

[Brendan]

If you send in a ticket requesting it we can make a remote backup of your site to one of our backup machines for a small one time charge. This puts your site on 2 servers running RAID arrays, short of a asteroid hitting our datacenter you would probably not lose your data.

-Brendan

[y6y6y6]

And you can usually just worry about backing up newer files and your database. There really isn't any need to backup *everything* since not everything changes very often, if at all.

For instance on one of my sites I have about 200 megs of images. Obviously it would take forever to back that up, even something faster than dialup. But those files never change, so I don't ever bother to back them up. I already have local copies saved.

But my database changes constantly. So that's what I back up daily. This can be done easily from the phpMyAdmin interface. Click on the database, then "export", and follow the instructions.

[KLH]

It would be nice if you could set up a cron job to do that.. Maybe e-mail a backup daily to you, or send it to another server (like if your ISP has a webserver where HR could FTP in and upload a backup there).

And maybe there is a way to do that, but I just don't know how..

[paolorulez]

i set two command line for cron jobs in my control panel

everynight backup in ftp and optimize database

1 montly send backup on my pc automatically
:D

P.S my db is 230MB

dataloss??whats??:D :D

[Myke]

thats a great idea, i need to start doing something like that. I always do everything manually. :P

[Brendan]

also if you have 2 accounts with us on seperate servers you could back them up to eachother fairly easily.

-Brendan

[-rAz-]

I just wonder dont you guys at HR backup to DAT tape devices or anything ?
Like said above backups have always been a thorn in the eye for a service provider, be it a webhosting company or be it any service provider. Where i work we also had problems in the past and will continue to have them in the future from time to time just because its an automated process. Some things that go wrong need human (intelligent) intervention which automated processes cant provide. And making it a manual process is for many companies also a no go coz backups are mostly possible at non standard times during the day coz during workhours the server load would be too high and above that it would be a fulltime job in most cases.
After reading these threads now i am warned for in the future that i need to keep certain data backed up to my local PC.

[y6y6y6]

"i set two command line for cron jobs in my control panel"

I'm embarassed to say that my shell scripting skills aren't what they used to be. And they were never that hot. Could you show us what your backup scripts look like?

[g0ldman]

With the crash of the server my site was on I lost my entire site - luckily I had back ups so it wasn't too bad. Still it would have been nice if my site had been backed up on a hard copy - a zip or dvd maybe. I guess there would be an extra fee for that though. HostRocket did give me two months of free hosting, so that was a nice gesture.

[y6y6y6]

" I guess there would be an extra fee for that though."

I know Hostrocket has apologized for this repeatedly. But it still bugs the hell out of me. And the idea that people think there should be an extra charge for it is even worse.

Having bulletproof (literally and figuratively) backups should be one of the core goals for a hosting company. Even if a meteor hits the server room customers shouldn't lose more than a week of data. and that shouldn't cost more, it should be a given.

Having the servers hacked or the drives meltdown is *expected*. Even multiple drive failure is expected. Backup policy should take that into account.

Again, I'm sure Hostrocket knows this business better than I do. But people shouldn't be so quick to think that rock solid backups are a value add service.

[/ranting]

[g0ldman]

Yeah you're probably right. But if you think about it, if it costs $20.00 a customer for a zip disk or dvd-rom, it would start to add up. But I guess we're paying about 12.95 a month, so maybe they should back it up better.

[Tammy]

I don't believe in e-mailing backups, too many chances that the mail will be seen by others. Something to think about if you have sensitive data on your site, if it is just a personal site it really doesn't matter.

[Viper007Bond]

Originally posted by Tammy
I don't believe in e-mailing backups, too many chances that the mail will be seen by others. Something to think about if you have sensitive data on your site, if it is just a personal site it really doesn't matter.
And the fact that my 600 MB site would be pretty hard to attach to an e-mail. ;)

[g0ldman]

LOL. That would take a while.

[Chris 96 WS6]

also if you have 2 accounts with us on seperate servers you could back them up to eachother fairly easily.

-Brendan

I'd like more information on how this is done since I have four accounts with HR. I have my forums DBs on each set up with cron jobs to back up to the main directories, but cross-back ups seems like an excellent step to safeguard against data loss.

On a separate topic, I know at one time HR didn't back up MySQL databases. Is this still the case?