Hi i am currently providing hosting for my clients who have come to me for coding. I am planning on going global. Although i have absolutely no problem in finding the servers and billing softwares and support ( billing software is my own and support is in house for the first few months ) i am completely troubled by backups. What do i do here? Do i get a smaller server and remotely back the files? Or do i mention in AUP etc asking my clients to simply make their own backups or rely on my dedicated server provider??? Please help. Also in case there are other things i need to be warned about please feel free to mention them. Thanks

Are you providing shared hosting by your own dedicated server? If so, you should do backup for your customers on your second HDDs or remotely backup on another server at other data centers.

It really all depends on what you want to offer ... a lot of host do not make client's data backups and leave the responsibility up to them and they are doing pretty well. But I think offering backups (weekly or daily) is an added value to any web hosting company.

Well right now its only for 8 clients for whom too i myself manage. I am going to go 'global' if i may say so. The thing is i am getting a really good server but it has 1 HDD. And manual backups for 250gb etc ( if it clicks ) will be a pain. Also its no use backing up on the same server too. Thats why i wanted to know...

http://bqbackup.com/

I'd highly recommend a RAID 1 setup on the server, and then if you want to, also backup to a remote FTP server.

Yeah, RAID would be a good idea, and an offsite backup would be good too (tape drive or something along those lines)

But I think much depends on the type of RAID.

Hi, I would get a sencondary hard disk and I would configure the daily or weekely backup from your server's control panel. Then tell your customers you do local backups and if they need further security they can purchase you a remote backup solution, so you buy another server to host their data, or they can download the data to their pc. Nice?.

Greetings.

I tell customers to backup their own files. However, I run RAID 10 servers, daily local backups to separate drives, offsite backups, and in a couple cases I even provide limited hourly snapshots.

Also its no use backing up on the same server too.

That's not true. Backing up on the same server helps with customer error ("oops...so and so deleted or changed file such and such and I need to restore it back") which has actually to date been 100% of my restores (user error).
However, yes, it will not help in the event of a disk failure, so you really should have some sort of offsite backup.

And even though I do tell customers to backup their own files, most don't.

Personaly i have a raid system set up to ensure that no data is lost if a hard drive fails, i also make a weekly backup of everything on the server, and a daily offsite backup for the customers that have the higher priced accounts.

But even though i have all my backups i always tell the customer to make their own backups. An i accept no responsibility for lost data.

Another option is to find a provider that makes images of your dedicated server onto a separate physical or virtual server. How fast you have to have your system back up and running after complete failure, whether it be hard disk, cpu, memory, natural disaster, etc. will help determine your needs.

Thanks a lot. I think id go for offshore/remote site backup and charge a nominal fee. But if i do take a server with 2 hdd then i preseume if entire server crashes etc then its no use ( meaning if one hdd is burnt out then the second can also get burnt out right??? ).
Another Q. What if i simply set up a system at home and download entire data to this system? Will that be feasable?
Thanks.

Another Q. What if i simply set up a system at home and download entire data to this system? Will that be feasable?


As long as the data is stored somewhere else than the server it's used on, and is *easily* accessible in the event a restore is needed (i.e., if it takes you 20 hours to copy all the data to a new server from your home, then no, that's probably not the best idea), then you should be good.

Use RAID. Backup to bqbackup.com. Make sure you clearly state in your ToS that you are not responsible for data loss and customers are responsible for their own backups.

There. You're covered. ;)

--Tina

Continuing on Tina's reply... and if you "really" want to provide a managed backup solution, you can charge extra for it. Backups / Disaster Recovery are extremely important and definitely something that can offered as a value-added-service costing well beyond the cost of the server they're paying for. Disaster Recovery is always expensive, and usually requires consulting, so it's a different beast than providing a relatively automated shared/dedicated hosting account.

In our setup we use RAID 1, a third hard drive for cpanel backups, network backup, and like Tina mentioned still state in our TOS that backups are the customer's responsibility.

Remember, we live in a law suit happy world. It's far better to have done everything possible to keep your customer's data secure than it is to loose data, and wish you had done more when you're faced with a lawsuit from an angry customer.

Regardless of what it says in your TOS, running a server with 1 drive and no backups would be negligent IMO. Setup a RAID1, and do remote backups. You'll thank yourself later down the line.

As already mentioned, http://bqinternet.com

Used them for an age now and very happy, many hosts use them, $5 will get you 10gb of remote backup with rsync. Increase the storage as you grow, easy, cost effective and safe.

we use raid 10 + local backup with seperate disk + nas remote backup...