Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Alternative to backup?

[wheimeng]

Hi Guys,

Each of our servers has roughly 28GB of data for backup, it’s all good but it’s a pain in the a-s-s during backup period.

Server load spikes to 7-8 for 5+ hours, although there is not much of degradation in performance, my clients are always concerned of this.

Is there any way to do backup without having high load?

[mkc]

What do you use to do your backups? Have you tried using 'nice' on the backup script?

[wheimeng]

It is cPanel automated backup. Is there any other ways to do that?

[Steven]

http://www.rfxnetworks.com/sysbk.php ?

[wheimeng]

Does it work with account restoration?

[wheimeng]

BTW, would incremental backup reduce load?

[allera]

Originally posted by UltraUnixNET
BTW, would incremental backup reduce load?

Very much so. CPanel uses rsync and automatically nices them. That is why your customers don't really notice.

Incremental backups are when rsync checks the source and target files and if they are different, it backs it up. If it's the same (as 90%+ files will be), it doesn't do a thing. Instant super-speedy backups! The first backup will be harsh, but everything after that is pie.

[wheimeng]

So how would I restore the account? say without incremental, we do it by restorepkg, how would it work out if it isn't a .gz file?

[Bashar]

using WHM or regular cp command

[allera]

I can't see it being much different than how it normally does it. a .gz file is just a compressed file. The data is all the same and likely to be in the exact same configuration inside the file.

I'd head over to the CPanel forums and see what others have done.

[Lem0nHead]

i think WHM backups are crap

1) "do you want daily backups?" "oh, ok... but i'm going to save weekly and monthly too... and you can't disable this!"

unless you change the source as I done (and I'm guessing this script will be overwritten in the next cpanel update)

2) "do you want to save to FTP?" "so you can't save server restore, just accounts restore"

i'm thinking about making a script myself, but don't have time yet

or trying to use sysbk... anyone using it for cpanel servers here?

[wheimeng]

Yes, I second that, find it absurd having weekly and monthly. Having them as option would be a great idea but its stupid to do it essentially.

[Dacsoft]

Lem0nHead
Yes I am using sysbk on my CPanel servers. It has been working fine so far. I haven't really ever had to do a restore, so can't say how that will go.

[sprintserve]

Originally posted by Lem0nHead
i think WHM backups are crap

1) "do you want daily backups?" "oh, ok... but i'm going to save weekly and monthly too... and you can't disable this!"

You can do it without changing the code (and hence no problem with Cpanel rewritting it) by simply chattr +i weekly and monthly backup directories.

[Lem0nHead]

Originally posted by sprintserve
You can do it without changing the code (and hence no problem with Cpanel rewritting it) by simply chattr +i weekly and monthly backup directories.

yep

I did that before, as you suggest in another thread, and it worked well.

But since I wanted to edit it to send me an E-Mail after the backup was done (because I prefer to backup it to SAMBA server manually, typing the password), and I came with the "weekly" and "monthly" thing in my front, I couldn't resist changing it

BTW, as requested on PM, I'll tell the way I changed the code, in case it interests to someone else.
I'm afraid to post the whole code here, since it's subject to cpanel license, so I'll say just the changes... (BACKUP BEFORE!)

where you have:

if ($CONF{'BACKUPINT'} eq "daily")

go 11 lines down and you will see:

if (! -e "${basedir}/weekly" || isolderthen(6,"${basedir}/weekly"))

start commenting there (put a "#" [no quotes] in the start) and comment 15 more lines (you should have 16 "#")

after you do that, type:

root@server01 [~]# perl -c /scripts/cpbackup
/scripts/cpbackup syntax OK

and hope to see syntax OK... if you don't see it, check if you commented the correct lines.


if you want to get an E-Mail after backup is complete, search for

sub isolderthen {

BEFORE that, add:

open(MAIL,"|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t");
print MAIL "To: root\n";
print MAIL "From: cPanel BACKUP <noreply\@noreply.com>\n";
print MAIL "Subject: Backup Complete\n\n";
print MAIL "The backup is complete";
close(MAIL);

a few notes about this code:
1) you may need to change "/usr/sbin/sendmail" to your current sendmail location, although I guess this one will work for almost all RH distributions
If you're not sure where your sendmail is located, type:

root@server01 [~]# whereis sendmail
sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/lib/sendmail

2) If you want to change the "To" field to some other E-Mail, don't use "@", use "\@" (like is being done at the "From" field)...
example:

print MAIL "To: name\@isp.com\n";