Backup Procedures - What do you use?

[Fergal]

How do you back up your forum data? Do you use any particular software, backup service or storage to protect your data?

Options I've seen used include;

http://www.grype.ca/data-backup-with-baxo
http://www.r1soft.com/
http://rsync.samba.org/
http://phpsitebackup.com/
http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/storage/

 

[Nathan]

When I used to have my forum, I just used phpmyadmin to backup the database and manually backed up my forum files at a ridiculous time (to stop the site from being slow at peak times) to my PC, then put the files on seperate HDD to avoid losing the data.

 

[Fergal]

Thanks Nathan, I want to put an automated back up procedure in place for my VB forum, if I can't get an automated process sorted out I might do what you suggest.

Anyone else?

 

[D]

I use Sypex to backup and restore databases 🙂 Its pretty quick to restore them too, took me 3 mins to restore a 300mb database compared to hours using phpmyadmin.

 

[Fergal]

Thanks Shady, I hadn't come across that one before. Is it automated, e.g. can you set it to run a backup of your database every 24 hours?

 

[D]

You can't set it on a timer. It has to be done by hand but you can do that via a cron job

mysqldump -u host_username -phostpassword databasename > /home/public_html/dbbackup.sql ; gzip /home/public_html/dbbackup.sql

replace host_username with your database username and hostpassword with the password.

/home/public_html/dbbackup.sql <<-- that is the path to where you want your database backup to be stored 🙂

You can set it to run whenever you like, every day, 12 hours or even every 2 hours.

Edit--

Actually, I just found out it can be used on a timer. You can set sypex to run at whatever time you choose. But im unsure on how to do it, it just says on the homepage.

 

[Fergal]

Thanks for the info ShadyX! That is helpful, still not sure who I am going to use yet.

 

[Nathan]

Thanks Nathan, I want to put an automated back up procedure in place for my VB forum, if I can't get an automated process sorted out I might do what you suggest.

Anyone else?

Well personally I'm not a fan of automated backups, cause you never know if they will work 100% all the time, whereas if you do it manually you're sure. I won't suggest something because I personally have never used an automated backup, I'm sure there's plenty of good ones out there though.

 

[Fergal]

I've seen that a lot of people think that way Nathan. Thanks for your feedback.

 

[NaXuh]

I usually do it myself, by using the MyBB Backup feature. It gives me the database, no need to go into phpmyadmin or anything.

Once and awhile I will do it in phpmyadmin just to be safe.

I've actually been thinking for awhile to make it backup automatically, which would be really nice for me. Have it save the backup in the /backups/ directory, and have it run each day. A custom 'task' in the MyBB task system would do that, although I could just write a php script to do it and use a cron job to run it.

 

[Fergal]

Sounds good NaXuh, I hope it works out well for you.

 

[Cloverfield]

My forum gets backed up every hour by my host which means I would hardly lose anything should I be hacked or anything like that 🙂

 

[Fait]

I backup my Data daily spically after the recent host issues We,ve been having But I suggest using A automatic backup & Manual Backups aswill

 

[Fergal]

Thanks Spudster.

My forum gets backed up every hour by my host which means I would hardly lose anything should I be hacked or anything like that 🙂

It might be worth thinking about what would happen if your host suddenly went out of business or if they got hacked.

 

[Cloverfield]

I'm good friends with the owner so he would tell me if he was going out of business so I could host elsewhere.

 

[Medora]

I do my backups manually. For many years I used phpMyadmin to create backups, but my database got so big about a year ago that the download would end prematurely. So now I use SSH and the software PuTTY (as my "SSH client").

 

[CyberFreak]

I'm good friends with the owner so he would tell me if he was going out of business so I could host elsewhere.

You can't be sure though so it is better to be prepared :yes:

 

[Branden]

My host and I back up every day.

 

[MrJohn]

HawkHost has a backup system that you can use from the CPanel. I also make back ups every now and again, like once a week.

 

[Nathan]

I'm good friends with the owner so he would tell me if he was going out of business so I could host elsewhere.

If ive ever learned anything during my life, it would be to never rely on anyone; no matter how close you may think you are with them.