Hello,

I am wondering how some of you newer/smaller web hosting companies with dedicated servers handle backups for your servers? I am assuming you have to provide backups or you risk losing data and clients.

How did you do it when you got started? I am wondering what options a person who is just getting started has? Did any of you just .zip and download client directories or other key files once a week or month? (like with a DSL or cable modem) or use dual hard drives and certain software to mirror them? or are there companies out there with reasonable monthly fees to do backups?

Just curious how you got started. Thanks!

A dual hard drive in a machine, mirrored or not, is not a backup. It's a redundant harddrive, which is nice if your hard drive crashes, but it's not a backup.

Relying on a company to make a backup for you is asking for trouble, IMHO. I would want to be responsible for all backups personally. Then, if something is not right, at least I know who to balme.

I use rsync to mirror my server, and I make full weekly backups of everything, kept off site.

Also, make sure whatever backup solution you choose, that the recovery works. The backup is worthless to me, it's the recovery thats priceless.

A dual hard drive in a machine, mirrored or not, is not a backup. It's a redundant harddrive, which is nice if your hard drive crashes, but it's not a backup.
How is that not backup? If you drive crashes then the other drive can take over. Sounds like backup to me. It might not be the traditional kind but it's still a type.

Thanks for responding,

you said you use rsync? does that backup to a tape drive or your PC or a backup server or something? I am not familiar with rsync, am just researching this all. Thanks for your help!

I have to agree with netsolutions. You can backup to a disk drive the same way that you can backup to a tape drive.

Same principal. Only the disk drive is probably faster. We do it every night.

"I have to agree with netsolutions. You can backup to a disk drive the same way that you can backup to a tape drive.

Same principal. Only the disk drive is probably faster. We do it every night.
"


Having both is probably a better idea. What if someone somehow gets superuser privileges on your server, then does a "rm -rf /" ? The 2nd drive would be useless in this situation.

Imagine if you had 5+ servers full of your clients' files. If a hacker was targeting your servers, he could wipe out your entire business overnight.

If one depends on this for a solid chunk of his/her income, then isn't it better to be safe?

If you can't afford tape backup, I would at least hookup a cheap server to a DSL or Cable connection, then run a script on cron to do a nightly tar download or rsync. Better yet, in addition to the backup via DSL, you could do a tape backup of the files on your home server before you go to bed.

Lets say we backed up everything onto tape and then the server goes down. We have the tape full of data. Now what?

Your best best to recover quickly is to have a second server. You should if you are running proper DNS anyways. right? :)

basically do a full backup, then a diff every night following you can do sftp or rsync. Keep everything set up the same way on both servers.

If the servers are in the same data centers you could even write a script that will bring up the other servers IP addresses, after the server has died. Combine that with a monitoring program/service and you have a very good and quick disaster recovery.

Works like a charm.
However you should look in to off-site remedies.

Assuming that the hd isn't corrupted or damaged, restore the files. If the hd is damaged, install a new hd then restore.

But if you have RAID 1 why would you need tape backup? What are the odds of both Hard Drives going down in the same night?

Originally posted by netsolutions
But if you have RAID 1 why would you need tape backup? What are the odds of both Hard Drives going down in the same night?
Well.. if a cracker gets into your system (nobody plans on that happening - but unfortunately it does), he/she can do just about anything he wants. I've heard of crackers rm'ing entire directories (like /etc, /var, /home, or simply /). In that case - even with Raid - you, my friend, would be up that well known body of water without a means of propulsion. ;)

Not to mention there is always the potential for data corruption. We had some FS corruption on one of our RAID5 servers a week or so ago, and take it from me - RAID was of no help whatsoever. A [more] solid backup system would have been though.

Regards,
Matt Lightner
mlightner@site5.com

So do most people suggest both RAID1 and tape or if you have tape is RAID1 just in vain?

If someone told me "Your data is backed up" and one of the following scenarios happened, explain to me how you'd recover your backed up data

A: Tech drops your server, the hard drives are toast.
B: Cracker gets root on your server. rm -R --force /*
C: Tech erases your server by mistake.
D: Your host goes bankrupt and pulls the plug on the NOC.

To me, a backup is a copy of your data that you can restore in case your data is lost.

When your data is backed up to separate media, away from your computer, your chances of loosing your data go down dramatically. Thats why I keep 3 separate copies of my data. I'd like to keep my chance for data loss very slim.

I guess RAID is a sort of backup. It protects against one thing, a dead hard drive. I guess if thats your only worry, then it's a great backup solution. I have a lot more worries :)


We rsync our main server to our hot backup server nightly. It's like a smart ftp client that only copies over files that have changed. http://rsync.samba.org

I was not talking about backup methods. I was just arguing that backing up to hard drive is still backing up. You don't need to backup to tape in order for it to be considered backing up. In that case, whoever posted otherwise was just outright wrong, IMHO.

As long as people are quoting me pretending that I was talking about backup methods, I thought I should quote myself from another thread where I actually discussed them:

"About the backup, I'd definitely reccomend a second drive over tape backup, unless you're on site. The only benefit of a tape over a drive is that you can store the tapes off site and you can have multiple copies of complete backups.

As long as you're not on site and can't benefit from changing tapes and storing them elsewhere, you might as well use a second drive.

We actually mirror the system drive, and then have a third drive for nightly backups. But if you're not too worried, you can probably get away without the mirror."

More than likely your last backup tape is still going to be in the tape drive, and can be erased by a hacker just as easily as the drives. Hopefully you're rotating tapes. Even if you are, it's possible that the hacker could have compromised your machine months ago and is preventing the backup tapes from having anything useful on them.

I agree that the safest bet for hard drive backups would be a seperate machine that acts as a backup server. A server with a lot of storage space, no network access, which you can backup all of your servers too incrementally. This isn't feasible for most, but works great.

A live mirror of a machine is no more secure from hackers than a single machine. The mirror would be just as easy to compromise as the original. A live mirror protects against failure, not against hackers.

Your datacenter is just as likely to sell you your servers, or just your hard drives, as they are to sell you your backup tapes, should they go out of business and "pull the plug".

rsyncing to a machine at your house seems unfeasible unless you only have one server. I know, why don't I have a duplicate machine in my house for every machine that I colocate? That makes sense if you're paranoid.

There are hypothetical flaws in every backup method. You only need to use one that is reasonable and that has been tested to work.

If your customers need more than a reasonable backup method of their data, they should be able to contact you and arrange for it at their expense. IMHO.

Originally posted by archangel777
"I have to agree with netsolutions. You can backup to a disk drive the same way that you can backup to a tape drive.

Same principal. Only the disk drive is probably faster. We do it every night.
"


Having both is probably a better idea. What if someone somehow gets superuser privileges on your server, then does a "rm -rf /" ? The 2nd drive would be useless in this situation.

Imagine if you had 5+ servers full of your clients' files. If a hacker was targeting your servers, he could wipe out your entire business overnight.

If one depends on this for a solid chunk of his/her income, then isn't it better to be safe?

If you can't afford tape backup, I would at least hookup a cheap server to a DSL or Cable connection, then run a script on cron to do a nightly tar download or rsync. Better yet, in addition to the backup via DSL, you could do a tape backup of the files on your home server before you go to bed.

hehe
You could make a script to run every day, where it mounts the second drive to /backup
copies whatever it needs off the primary hard drive onto the secondary hard drive
then un mounts it
and rm -rf /backup
Kind of lame, but just an idea :D

Well, like I said before, we make weekly backups of all our data and server configurations, and keep incramental copies of the backup off site, off line. Hard drive storage is cheap.

And this works for us now because we are smaller.

It's just my opinion that a RAID setup is not a reasonable backup solution. As I can see, a lot of you feel differently, and thats fine. I'm being too paranoid with my data and my business.

But reading this board over the past few months has made me realize a lot of things. Mistake will happen. Bad ones.

When a bad mistake happens to my server, I'll be back up and running within a few hours. Of course I will be mad, I'll try to blame someone etc... but none of that will help me get my data back and my servers back online.

You are right, bitserve, and I was wrong. RAID or a second hard drive is a backup. It is a reasonable solution for some people.