I think of myself as a reasonable person. I'm completely understanding when it comes to minor bumps related to hardware failures, and other largely unpredictable problems. Losing a day's work, while annoying, is something I can live with.

HOWEVER, it seems that may hosts don't bother to do routine backups. I've heard of people being burned, and just recently I've been screwed twice by two different hosts. It seems that Hostrocket borked a hardware installation on "Host19" yesterday. I attempted to open up some work I'd completed last night, the culmination of roughly 20 hours over the past week, to find the whole directory and mySQL database were missing. Everything was gone. I hopped on over the Hostrocket's forums to see what was going on, and there was an announcement up about a hardware failure, leading to complete data loss, and that they'd restored their most recent backup. As far as I can tell, their most recent backup happened on Feb 18th.

In my mind, Hostrocket made multiple errors. Errors that I believe a well-run, reasonable company would never make.

1) They did not keep routine backups. Like it or not, people are paying them to manage data. If the world implodes, customers should not lose data.

2) When doing any kind of hardware work, it seems painfully obvious that a full backup would be a "smart" move. Why would a company not do this?

This is unacceptable, and I'm wondering if I'm the only person who thinks so. Hostrocket doesn't seem to think so, if deleting ~8 negative responses to this news was any indication.

So, how does one recover when a web host hasn't upheld their side of the deal? Many times, they can charge a customer if the customer goes over their allotted bandwidth/space/server resources/etc., but there's no way for someone like me to get anything back. I've lost 20 hours worth of billable work, and there's no way I'm making my client pay for it, so what am I to do? Small claims court is out, I doubt sending a bill to hostrocket will help (though it would be funny :D), so I'm out of luck with nothing to show for my efforts.

How do you all recover when you get screwed?

Recovering is easy. We for example provide daily backups for our client data. Do so will save us lot's of work when it comes to a disaster.

Well this doesn't answer your question, but I would just like to say that I agree with you completely. I think every host should do daily backups. If, for whatever reason, then cannot do that, then weekly is absolutely the limit. Anything over a week just about eliminates the entire purpose.

if the host doesnt advertise a backup or even more so states in the toc that its the clients responsibility to perform backups then no you shouldnt assume it. whilst a host may backup and not mention it, a restore doesnt work 100% of the time and no host wants to be left with promising they backup and not being able to action the restore and being sued. basically it varies host to host and depends on the servers and the plan your on.
yes it may seem logical and you couldnt be blamed for assuming this but assumption is a dangerous game :)
sorry to hear of your loss.
best wishes

While many hosts do provide reliable backups, it is usually a good idea to make your own backups as well.

To back up MySQL databases, do this:

1. Log into PhpMyAdmin at your host
2. Click the database you want to backup
3. Scroll down to "View dump (schema) database"
4. Check "Structure and data"
5. Select GO
6. Select the outputted dumpfile... Copy and paste into a text file

And to restore it again:

7. Log back into your hosts' control panel
8. Create the database / user
9. Login to PhpMyAdmin
10. Click the database in the side menu
11. Scroll down to "Run SQL query/queries on database"
12. Paste the dumpfile you got from step 6 into the box and click GO

I hope this saves you some time in the future.

Recovering is easy. We for example provide daily backups for our client data. Do so will save us lot's of work when it comes to a disaster.

So, what do you pay the hosting companies for? I see no reason to charge a client my hourly rate to do something that a hosting company should already be doing, after all... they are in the business of managing data.

I backup sites when they are deployed. I pay hosting companies to manage it after that.

If, for whatever reason, then cannot do that, then weekly is absolutely the limit. Anything over a week just about eliminates the entire purpose.

There's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. Unfortunately, it seems unquestioning customers let them do whatever the hell they want, and when something happens all the blame and responsibility magically ends up pointing to their customers.

if the host doesnt advertise a backup or even more so states in the toc that its the clients responsibility to perform backups then no you shouldnt assume it.

So, what am I paying hosts for? Presumably, they have competent employees to handle the data I've entrusted to them. Hostrocket's terms of service say nothing about data loss. It's the first thing I looked for when this happened.

whilst a host may backup and not mention it, a restore doesnt work 100% of the time and no host wants to be left with promising they backup and not being able to action the restore and being sued.

I've noticed that it's common practice in the hosting business to dodge any sort of responsibility. (*Note: I didn't say everyone, just that it seems common) Unfortunately for their customers, there is no good way of making sure a host upholds their end.

yes it may seem logical and you couldnt be blamed for assuming this but assumption is a dangerous game

It's my fault for not making a backup, which is why I'm not charging the client for the lost work. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one in this situation who can be held accountable for what happened.

avara: I typically do make my own backups. Then again, I typically don't develop on a hosting account so it's a moot point. Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to run multiple development servers to write applications for different clients.

I guess the biggest part of my question is, what exactly is the function of a webhost? Do they simply provide bandwidth and a temporary repository to put things that will use said bandwidth? Or are they an IS type business, being paid to manage things that their typical customers would rather not be worried about?

I believe it's the latter. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any good way of holding web based companies accountable for their responsibilities. We need a federal small claims court. That would make me one happy consumer.

While I can't speak for other providers, I can say that we do backups every day. Since we also provide remote backup services, it isn't hard for us to do. :)

You may want to try calling a host before you buy...tell them that you lost a file that was on their server 8 days ago and you need it restored. See what they say. That should answer all your questions.

im afraid what you pay them for is the list of features written on the page when you signed up. theres no 'minimum bar' for features. what you should expect is that they ensure your site is accessible, that your files arent corrupted (note corrupted not lost) that they answer any common questions regarding their service (they arent there to act as a design or coding consultancy), theres probably a few more reasonable ones, but by default they shouldnt be expected to offer more then the minimum required to make sure your site exists. Most hosts offer more, like ICQ and phone contact, and backups etc, and they usually note this on their page. i dont advocate many of these practices but im merely pointing out that unless your told your getting something you shouldnt expect it.

Originally posted by GoofBall

So, what do you pay the hosting companies for? I see no reason to charge a client my hourly rate to do something that a hosting company should already be doing, after all... they are in the business of managing data.

I backup sites when they are deployed. I pay hosting companies to manage it after that.


This is a bad idea. It is your data (or your customer's), so it is ultimately your responsibility. As someone has already mentioned, backups can fail, data can become corrupted, and a whole host of things can go wrong. For your own piece of mind you should back up your web site everytime a change is made, and if you are using a database, you should back it up nightly.

I would also disagree with your last sentence, unless you are paying for a managed service (like those offered by RackMY), you paying the web hosting company to provide you connectivity and storage. Things can happen to connections and to data, that can result in data loss or the site being unreachable...that is part of the world of hosting. In cases where that happens, you should always have your own backup.

Also, it is not that difficult to automate the backup process, a couple of quick scripts and you don't have to worry about it.

Originally posted by uuallan
For your own piece of mind you should back up your web site everytime a change is made, and if you are using a database, you should back it up nightly.


One of my clients has 650MB worth of mysql data and the number keeps growing everyday (not to mention 1GB of additional data under /home). I feel much better if I am not the one to be held responsible for data backup, but how would he backup his 1.6GB of data nightly?

cheers,
:beer:

A agree, that you should *always* back up your site and/or databses regardles of the change. Luckily my database is only 145KB, but I put alot of work in making that database.

Based on my limited experience with hosting, but alot of experience at computers... Never assume anything!

Though kinda OT, but on the subject of backups... Does anyone know of a script preferably php (if there is one) that can be run as a cron, to backup MySQL database(s)?

Hi,

The current situation with our backup setup is this - the servers at our new datacenter run on RAID arrays and are backed up daily weekly and monthly to remote backup servers as well. The servers at the VDI datacenter are not backed up remotely, they are only backed up with the RAID setup, which is what failed on host19.

The reason we don't have 'daily backups' on or product list even though its a service we have been providing for new customers for a few months now, is because we haven't fully rolled out the system for our older customers yet and we didn't want to mislead anyone into thinking that we had.

-Brendan

Correct. Web Hosting is not Data Warehousing. Web Hosts are paid to serve web data or applications, not to provide bullet proof storage of the data or web application in question. Unless the host in question specifically states in a TOS that they provide X backups, then my friend, its your fault for not backing up your work.

Even if they do profess to do backups, if it were me, I would have backed up my work somewhere. I've been burned by not backing up my work once. That one time was enough for me to learn that hard lesson.

Take care,

Brian



Originally posted by uuallan


This is a bad idea. It is your data (or your customer's), so it is ultimately your responsibility. As someone has already mentioned, backups can fail, data can become corrupted, and a whole host of things can go wrong. For your own piece of mind you should back up your web site everytime a change is made, and if you are using a database, you should back it up nightly.

I would also disagree with your last sentence, unless you are paying for a managed service (like those offered by RackMY), you paying the web hosting company to provide you connectivity and storage. Things can happen to connections and to data, that can result in data loss or the site being unreachable...that is part of the world of hosting. In cases where that happens, you should always have your own backup.

Also, it is not that difficult to automate the backup process, a couple of quick scripts and you don't have to worry about it.

Originally posted by dektong


One of my clients has 650MB worth of mysql data and the number keeps growing everyday (not to mention 1GB of additional data under /home). I feel much better if I am not the one to be held responsible for data backup, but how would he backup his 1.6GB of data nightly?

cheers,
:beer:

1a) REALLY long nightly download to his home PC over Dial Up. (yes, its a joke.)

1b) Not quite as long nightly download to his home PC over DSL/Cable.

2) Purchase an account on another server maybe even at another data center, setup an automated FTP/SCP/RCP to copy a tar ball nightly.

Take care,

Brian

Originally posted by dektong

One of my clients has 650MB worth of mysql data and the number keeps growing everyday (not to mention 1GB of additional data under /home). I feel much better if I am not the one to be held responsible for data backup, but how would he backup his 1.6GB of data nightly?


Wow, nice sized database :). I would recommend backing it up, then compressing it, and FTPing it to a remote server on a nightly basis, or purchase a NAS server, colocate it with the server, and back up the data to the NAS server.

Most hosts are not backing up your data for your archival purposes, but just in case there is hardware failure, and they need to restore.

It definitely should be done every 24 hours at the minimum.

I would definitely make sure that a host was doing this before I signed up with them. And if they did a restore from Feb 18th, instead of the day before, they better explain why, or I'd be suing.

I don't care what there TOS says, they are responsible for damages caused by negligence.

Originally posted by bitserve

I would definitely make sure that a host was doing this before I signed up with them. And if they did a restore from Feb 18th, instead of the day before, they better explain why, or I'd be suing.

I don't care what there TOS says, they are responsible for damages caused by negligence.

I have seen several large companies try to sue because of failed backups, and they never win.

If backups are not promised as part of the service the host provides, even if they do backup, all the suing in the world is not going to do you any good, because they would not be considered negligent.

Hardware fails, that's a fact of life. If there is a hardware failure, that is not the fault of the host, and they only have backups from 7 days ago, for whatever reason, that is what they will restore. If you are not happy, your only real recourse is to find another host.

The hosting company I use does back-ups every day at 4am and every Sunday at 5am, they create a back-up and transfer all the information to a separate datacenter.

I have always been happy with this set-up and have never had a problem.

They have talked about offering hourly back-ups to resellers (like myself), but haven't implemented it quite yet.

So I'm curious... many hosts advertise backup but it always turns out they backup the stuff on the same server your site is hosted on. When there is a hardware failure (in this case hardrive), doesn't that completely mess up all the stuff they've "backed-up" anyway? Should I be looking for a host that does backups to another server?

Thanks

You should contact the host ahead of time and see what they do and see if it is what is right for you. Many personal sites do not need backing up at all, where as many business sites need absolute guaranteed backups. The servers at our datacenter all run RAID 1 with nightly, weekly, and monthly remote backups to another server running RAID 5, so there isnt much chance of losing data on those, however if you simply dont need this level of backup then why pay for it. Even if its not listed as a seperate fee all of these these types of things are calculated in by the host when they set their prices. Its all about selecting the host that is right for your needs.

-Brendan

First off, I completely agree with you. That said, I think it depends on the company. If it's a "inexpensive" host, I doubt they'll do backups. Most of the webhosts here I'm imagining stick an 80+ Gig drive in a webserver and pack on as many clients as possible. How are they supposed to do backups? Most boxes are colocated and don't have the space or resources to install a tape changer. The cost alone would be at least double what the entire server would cost. Backing up to a second box would probably only get you 1 week (1 full + incremetals, all compressed) of backups. Even if you did it that way, your still pretty much doubling your hardware costs.

If you go with a larger host who has the infrastructure and amount of clients to support it, yes, I think it should be expected. If you go with a someone who bought a box at rackshack, no, I'd doubt you'll get backups.

Not at all excusing hosts who promise but don't deliver on backups. However, ...

Regardless of what a host promises, regardless of their intentions, regardless of their history, regardless of how much you trust them....never...never...never....make such an investment of time and energy and/or even money without doing your own backup. My standard rule for any of my designers and/or developers is that they must back up any changes they are making to a site any time they make them and if they are in the process of a major update must backup no less frequently than hourly. We do have backups on location, but we also maintain complete backups on our design servers for all sites where we are the designers.

There are just too many things that can go wrong to take the risk. Performing your own backups in addition to whatever the host does is, in my opinion, an insurance policy I would not be without.

It is not uncommon or hard to do a daily backup and i hope almost all hosts should be doing this
via script or other form.

Originally posted by 9onlinehost
It is not uncommon or hard to do a daily backup and i hope almost all hosts should be doing this
via script or other form.

Doing the backup is not hard, ensuring that the backup was successful and uncorrupted is a lot more difficult.

Originally posted by uuallan


Doing the backup is not hard, ensuring that the backup was successful and uncorrupted is a lot more difficult.

Correct. The only way to "test" is to actually restore a backup somewhere. Good luck doing that everyday for every account you run on your servers. :)

Take care,

Brian

As others have said, if a host doesn't claim to perform regular backups, you should assume that they don't. I'd also say that even if they do claim to perform regular backups, you should work as if they didn't.

While I'm on the topic, it would be really nice if backup scripts would honour some sort of robots.txt protocol. That is, if you could create a file which would tell a backup program not to backup files from that directory. Quite apart from files which aren't worth backing up (eg mail queues -- by the time the backup finishes, all the files in the queue will have long since been sent), there could very easily be privacy/security concerns... after all, how many people wipe their backup tapes before throwing them out?

With my previous websites before I decided to sponsor CentiHost I had the same problem. I was with host which I will not scorn but I lost the entire site. After that I got a lot more serious and before choosing a host I sent a e-mail with around 8 e-mails which provide me with sufficent information about the host. If a host doesn't advertise backups the best deal is to e-mail them and see if they do or if it could be arranged.

Guess what I've been doing all day. :rolleyes:

what you should expect is that they ensure your site is accessible, that your files arent corrupted (note corrupted not lost) .. <snip> .. but by default they shouldnt be expected to offer more then the minimum required to make sure your site exists.

Well, as of yesterday, a portion of my site was not accessible, and not longer exists. Wouldn't losing data completely be considered corrupting it?

i dont advocate many of these practices but im merely pointing out that unless your told your getting something you shouldnt expect it.

Why? Why should I not expect my work to stay where I've put it? Why shouldn't I expect HR to take reasonable action to ensure that I don't lose data? Why are webhosts held to a lower standard than any other service organization?

It is your data (or your customer's), so it is ultimately your responsibility.

Ultimately it's whoever's responsibility that's getting paid to manage it. In this case, Hostrocket was getting paid to serve the data (which they're no longer doing since it's gone), they've failed to do that. How do I hold them accountable?

As someone has already mentioned, backups can fail, data can become corrupted, and a whole host of things can go wrong.

I'm well aware of that, and I'm not complaining about something going wrong. I'm miffed that HR took less than reasonable steps to ensure they didn't lose data that's been entrusted to them.

I would also disagree with your last sentence, unless you are paying for a managed service (like those offered by RackMY), you paying the web hosting company to provide you connectivity and storage.

Exactly, I'm paying for the storage. It's Host rocket's job to manage the storage, they failed.

Things can happen to connections and to data, that can result in data loss or the site being unreachable...that is part of the world of hosting.

However, where do the host's responsibilities end? Why should they not be expected to take reasonable steps to do their job?

Also, it is not that difficult to automate the backup process, a couple of quick scripts and you don't have to worry about it.

Unfortunately it's not that simple when the host provides DB access through a web front-end only. Nor is it that simple when clients are spread across multiple hosts, on multiple types of servers, all run by multiple companies.

The servers at the VDI datacenter are not backed up remotely, they are only backed up with the RAID setup, which is what failed on host19.

Again, why did you not bother to back the server up before messing with the hardware? You new about the maintenance ahead of time, yet you didn't put the effort in to ensure the data stayed intact.

Correct. Web Hosting is not Data Warehousing. Web Hosts are paid to serve web data or applications, not to provide bullet proof storage of the data or web application in question.

I'm not asking, or expecting, bullet proof storage. I'm expecting that when something goes wrong on the hosts end, they'll be able to restore my site to the way it was a reasonable amount of time before hand. I don't mind losing a day's work, especially when it's something catastrophic. I do mind when they show no signs of planning ahead, and *I* eat the entirety of the resulting hassle.

Even if they do profess to do backups, if it were me, I would have backed up my work somewhere.

Again, I'm fully aware that I should have done that. What I'm questioning is why I'm the only one who must suffer the consequences of what happened? I could have prevented the problem, but Hostrocket caused it.

I don't care what there TOS says, they are responsible for damages caused by negligence.

I agree. But it seems they're not responsible, as they're not providing *any* sort of recompense. How do you hold someone like that responsible?

Hardware fails, that's a fact of life. If there is a hardware failure, that is not the fault of the host, and they only have backups from 7 days ago, for whatever reason, that is what they will restore. If you are not happy, your only real recourse is to find another host.

If only their backups were from 7 days ago. Month old backups is just irresponsible.

Again, I'm fully aware that I should have kept my own backup. I'm mostly just frustrated that the relationship between hosts and customers is so lopsided. *No* other service organization can function that way, and hiding behind the relative anonymity of the internet is only going to last so long.

Hi,

Daily backups are a service that we did not provide when you signed up your hosting account. We didn't provide asp hosting then, and asp doesn't work on our servers either. It's a service that we never claimed to offer and until we can and do provide it for 100% of our customers we will not claim to provide it for any of them, just to avoid confusion.

It is a service that a host either does or doesn't provide, and nowhere did we or have we ever said that we provide them, even though we now do on all new accounts and have done so for several months.

I am in no way saying that not having backups is the way to go... if it was then we wouldn't be doing it now, but you should be careful not to expect services above and beyond the ones that you signed up for. There is no 'hiding' going on as you put it, if you want give us a call (518) 371 - 3421.

-Brendan

I am not defending anyone, I will just speak from my experience. I used to be a CTO of a very large Internet company that did webhosting, colocation, etc. and now I own a company that does the same. I was smart and took a lot of what I learned as a CTO and from their really high priced attorneys.

You will not win in a court of law, unless there are several factors that have been met and contracted legally.

If you don't say you offer it (backups), you can't be sued for it. If you guarantee something (backups), you can be sued for it.

However most contracts, where you click "I agree" or or by "paying monthy makes you legally liable" is wrong. In most states on both sides, both company and consumer, these "contracts or agreements" will not hold up in a court of law. So basically it's buyer and seller beware. That is why many larger and smarter(?) colocation companies require a signed contract and require signed contracts for larger hosting packages. IE they have good lawyers...

We make no representations on our sites that we make backups on any of our sites. One of my companies does offer automated website backups and monitoring. That is the very reason we offer it because so many hosting companies do not do backups and rightly so. Do we make backups though? Yes. But we do not offer site restoration, we really only make back ups to restore the server itself.

If my business/reputation relied on my data being safe and backed up, I and only I would take the responsibility and initiative to keep my data safe? how much is it worth to you?

Originally posted by uuallan
I have seen several large companies try to sue because of failed backups, and they never win.

If backups are not promised as part of the service the host provides, even if they do backup, all the suing in the world is not going to do you any good, because they would not be considered negligent.

Hardware fails, that's a fact of life. If there is a hardware failure, that is not the fault of the host, and they only have backups from 7 days ago, for whatever reason, that is what they will restore. If you are not happy, your only real recourse is to find another host.

I think you misunderstood my post. If a host told me that they do backups every day, in case of hardware failure, and then they did a restore from a month ago, instead of from yesterda, they had better explain to me why they did the restore from a month ago, and not from yesterday.

If they do not have a reason, than I can only assume that they did not do what a reasonable person would have done. Rather than restoring from working backup tapes from yesterday, they chose not to.

Although I probably could not sue for damages, I bet that I could convince the judge to order them to act reasonably and restore from yesterday's tape, or explain why they couldn't.

Hopefully we would settle out of court. But I am not one to let people walk on me. I litigate to resolve problems that require it. And I beg everyone else not to let people walk on you, as well.

My results at getting people to act reasonable through help of the courts has been favorable. Your mileage may vary.

Originally posted by smartbackups
However most contracts, where you click "I agree" or :::snip:::. In most states on both sides, both company and consumer, these "contracts or agreements" will not hold up in a court of law.

Not true. There is a tremendous volume of case law that says it will. This type of agreement (where you click "I agree" or have to otherwise affirmatively agree) is known in case law as a "click-wrap" agreement and is as legally binding as "shrink-wrap" contracts you see on software, and just as legally binding as a signed contract.

A couple years ago Congress passed a law making digital signatures legal, and a click-wrap agreement falls under that law.

I agree with you that the contracts that say "by paying monthly you agree" are, in fact, going to be difficult to enforce in court. But click-wrap agreements where the customer must affirmatively confirm that they agree are absolutely 100% legal and enforcable in a court of law. There is a tremendous amount of case law to prove it.

Jason