Ive been checking RackShacks website, but I dont seem to find any backup option, not even under additional services.

Does anyone know, do they offer any kind of Backuping other than "download whole 80GIGS down to your box" ;) ? Im talking about something like tapes or whatever, so I could backup the whole server on daily basis so that in case of a HD failure/hacker attack/binladenrevenge, all the costumers data wouldnt be lost? I think this is a "musthave", since costumers rely on me. I cant tell them: go do your backups by your self (and that is by downloading the whole quota they are using)..

Thx.

Have you tried their sales team?

I think they only have 1 server (Dual P3 with Raid 1) that can do what you want it to do. Don't quote me on that, and Im pretty sure they are out of stock.

However, you might be able to pay for another HD and use that as a backup drive.

Originally posted by rackyou
I cant tell them: go do your backups by your self (and that is by downloading the whole quota they are using)..

Thx.


Why not? They created their site on their own machine themselves before uploading it. How many website owners spend large amounts of time on a site... upload it.. then delete it from their own machines? None that I know of.

Originally posted by rastoma



Why not? They created their site on their own machine themselves before uploading it. How many website owners spend large amounts of time on a site... upload it.. then delete it from their own machines? None that I know of.

not any smart person at least :D

exactly :)

But some things like databases and forums are not created on the user's personal computer.

it's uncommon NOT to have phpmyadmin or something easy to use to download sql's though.. which are fairly small compared to the site itself.

My home machine is a Linux box on a cable modem. I have a cron job do an rsync backup of my Rackshack server once per week. Works fine, hasn't used up too much bandwidth allowance.



Simon

Originally posted by rastoma
Why not? They created their site on their own machine themselves before uploading it. How many website owners spend large amounts of time on a site... upload it.. then delete it from their own machines? None that I know of.

Dont forget that some people have large databases and forums. And that thata is very important. There are also some scripts that are configurable through the http, so changes arent present on your disk, home HD, since it has been changed since you have uploaded. And more and more..

I know i can tell them im not offering backups, but then, they will rather just go to someone that does, and pay him extra dollar a month.. Im trying to provide a good service, and thats why im inquiring about this.. There are just to many hosts nowadays, and if you want to keep your costumers, you must make them pleased!
thx

PS: Simoncoles: you download all the data over your cable modem? What if theres more than 10GIGS? I dont know what kind of cable modems you guys have, but i doubt that you have more than 1mbit downlink.. So that would take ages.

Most cable modems in the US are 1.5, with many companies offering 2, 3 and even 5mbit connections. So pulling 10 gigs of data isn't that big of a deal.

Plus if you're using something such as rsync, you only copy new and changed files, saving on bandwidth.

Right.. In my country we get cable modems up to 1mbit, unles you know isp, then you get more ;) Mine at home is still 512, so screw it :] And ADSL is now to 2mbit for regular users, and can be extended to more, for lots of $$ ;)

More details about my setup:


My machine doesn't have all that much that changes week to week, I don't know how much I backup but its certainly not something I have had to worry about.

If you think about it you get 400GB per month from Rackshack, you've probably got 40GB disk on your machine, so if you backup once per week you are unlikely to bust your transfer limit unless you are using a lot of bandwidth anyway - in which case, there's no way you are going to get the data off the machine regardless of the method you use.

rsync is pretty efficient - it wouldn't surprise me if it was the most bandwidth-efficient way of getting data off a machine. Do "man rsync" for detail.

The line I use from cron is:

/usr/bin/rsync -e ssh -avzp --exclude "*.journal" --exclude "/proc/*" --exclude "/dev/*" --delete --compress my.server.com:/ /
path/to/backup/directory

The nice thing about this solution is you can easily check on your local machine if the backup is working OK.

Of course, you should probably backup your local machine as well :-)