Hi,

I currently have WHM backing up a 'standard' backup type to a secondary drive mounted as /backup

I'd like to be able to send a copy of all this data to another physical server within the same datacenter on a daily basis.

The secondary server that will receive the backups is a Windows box running an FTP server and hence is able to receive the files via FTP.

If anybody knows of any scripts that might be able to do this, or has an alternate suggestion on how this could be done, your help would be greatly appreciated.

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong area.

You'll want to run a cron job with a script (such as php) that can do ftp commands for you.

As a side note, I really suggest having your backup server be another Linux box. That way you can use rsync, keep permissions, etc.

I can be more specific if you like. I'm just assuming you know what cron, rsync, etc. is.

Could you explain that please.
Also, resync kills the server when its being done!

Thanks for your comments so far.

You'll want to run a cron job with a script (such as php) that can do ftp commands for you..

Yes, sorry I should have made it clear I was looking for a script I could run as a cron job. I left the question a bit open in case there were other suggestions.

As a side note, I really suggest having your backup server be another Linux box. That way you can use rsync, keep permissions, etc.

Yes if it was available I would - however I'm limited to having this Windows box available - thus the FTP account was the easiest setup as I can limit access to the account from the Linux box IP

I can be more specific if you like. I'm just assuming you know what cron, rsync, etc. is.

Yes, I'm from the dark side (I'm a .NET developer by trade) but I do know what cron & rsync are. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to write my own php script and my cron skills are very rudimentary as well. If you know of any scripts available that would be a mighty help.

Thank again for your help so far.

Every time I create a cron job myself, I just google what each of the numbers mean. Basically you type crontab -e, and then enter in how often you want the script to run (that is what I google as there are lots of options there), the script you want to run, and then optionally at the end you can pipe it to another output (such as /dev/null so that you won't get the output sent to you in e-mail)

As far as a good script goes - I don't know of one off the top of my head, but it would be really simple to write one, even if you are unfamiliar with PHP or whatever language you choose (especially if you're already a developer).

Try here: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ftp.examples.php. This example script is probably exactly what you want anyway.

Thanks found what I needed here;

http://www.webhostgear.com/174.html

The easiest thing to do will be to figure out when cpanel backups are finished normally. Then create a simple script to FTP everything on your daily backup folder to your offsite FTP server.

That is quick and dirty, but will work.

Otherwise, you can use "rsync" or other "syncronization" type of backup system to only upload CHANGES to your offsite server. (But FTP by itself can't do that.)

There's a free script I saw on the cpanel forums that can automate backups like this. can't remember what its called though. Just go to the cpanel forums and serach the term "backup".

Could you explain that please.
Also, resync kills the server when its being done!

RSync can be very resource intensive. Check out backup solutions which offer image or block-level backups. These backups typically take less CPU resources.

Adam