Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Remote Backup Implementation.

[Psi_]

Firstly, apologies if this is the incorrect section but I'm hoping for some insight on remote backups.

I've been exploring two possibilities.

1) Have a backup server in the same physical location as the main servers. Then have automated backups occur, through a local network. The benefits of this are obviously a) No bandwidth fee's b) Total control over data instead of relying upon a third party c) Faster transfer speeds.

However, that doesn't really help when it comes to disaster recovery etc, so, some sort of remote solution would probably be best.

2) Have a remote server in a different datacentre.
There's two ways of doing this, either by renting a server in an a different datacentre, and having remote backups that way (probably with Rsync), OR paying for some third party service.

I'd be interested in your input on what you think would work best and be most cost effective.

Cheers!

[david510]

What OS does your server have and any control panel installed?

[Psi_]

CentOS 4.x - cPanel.

[LoganNZ]

Honestly, I buy small hosting accounts from my personal selection of secure hosts.

I cluster these small accounts, compress my customers backups and then spread them out accurately and i double each segment by 3 to increase the backup redundancy by 3x. ( 300% technically )

Encryption is a must, before and after compression to ensure customer's data is 100%+ secure.

[SSHocker]

You'd be better off with the remote server and rsync option.

All the failover in the world isn't going to help you if both servers are in one DC (possibly even one rack) and the DC has issues.

THe bandisth will onlly really be an issue if there are large and very changeable accounts involved

[david510]

Originally Posted by Psi_

CentOS 4.x - cPanel.

You can configure remote ftp backup from the WHM. See cpanel.net/docs for more details on this.

[SSHocker]

Originally Posted by david510

You can configure remote ftp backup from the WHM. See cpanel.net/docs for more details on this.

I am fairly sure that only allows daily, which is too infrequent for anything worthwile in terms of failover.

Also rsync via SSH would be way more secure than ftp

[david510]

Originally Posted by SSHocker

I am fairly sure that only allows daily, which is too infrequent for anything worthwile in terms of failover.

No, remote ftp backup in WHM allows daily, weekly and monthly backup option. It depends on the way we configure the backup. We can select weekly option and select ftp transfer, so that only weekly backups are generated and transfered to remote ftp account. Incremental backup is not supported in case of remote ftp backup.

[SSHocker]

Yep, it does allow daily weekly and monthly but you really need hourly or two hourly for a site thats dynamic. Even more so if you are running failover mail

If it aint incremental it'll also chew bandwidth

[david510]

Well, in this case we can write a script to take backup of those accounts on a hourly basis and transfer it to a remote server using scp or rsync or even using ftp.