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Backup plans & strategies


SarisIsop

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As there are a lot of MDD customers on-line at the moment I thought it could be a good idea to have a thread about Backup Plans & Strategies.

 

I'm sure there a lot of people here with a lot of knowledge and could maybe give people like me a dummies guide.

 

I currently take a weekly backup of my forum, but I think that it's only for the posts/threads etc, I also take a full backup when doing any upgrades. I do both of those backups from the Admin control panel, but I have never thought or even know how to take a backup of everything that is on my server.

 

I'm not technically minded when it comes to IT and I'm just an old bloke running a forum, so if anyone does have some tip on the best way to perform backups please pass them on as I'm sure I'm not the only one with MDD with limited knowledge.

 

I have seen Mike saying "If you have a cPanel backup" he could restore it.

 

#1 How does that work ?

#2 How long does it take ?

#3 Will it use a lot of bandwidth ?

 

I've also seen someone mentioning a complete backup transfer to Dropbox, is this easy to set up and would it have got us all back on-line quicker. ?

 

Anyway if anyone wants to chip in please do so.

 

Thank you.

 

 

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It's really easy, in cPanel under "Files" there is this blue arrow that looks like a clock, named "Backup". Click it, then "Download a Full Website Backup". Next, you select where to save the compressed backup file (which also includes all databases). Can either be your home directory, so you can download it from your MDD FTP account once finished (leave e-mail notification checked) or directly upload it to a remote FTP server. Secure copy (SCP) is another option, it transfers the backup between hosts in SSH mode (if you don't know what this is, don't bother, pretty much a "pro" option). Voila, you got a full backup of all sites residing in your cPanel account.

 

Please note that a full backup isn't something you can restore via cPanel yourself, only the host can.

 

You can also use the "Backup Wizard", it's the same like "Backup", but step by step instead of all on one page.

 

Important: Most will probably use the option to put the backup in the home directory. Don't forget to download it via FTP. Delete the file from the server after downloading it, it's just wasting space and keeping a backup in the account you backed up is pointless. For maximum security, I'd recommend 3 backups: The ones MDD does anyway, one locally on your harddrive, one remote backup (Dropbox, remote FTP server, whatever).

 

As far as the backup on your local hardrive and the remote backup are concerned: Keep different versions, like the last 4 if you do weekly backups. Imagine your site gets hacked, e.g. Wordpress because you used an insecure third party plugin, a really insecure password like "password" and "admin" as username, etc. It's something the best host can't 100% prevent. You do a backup and recognize the hack 2 days later. Now, before fixing the backdoor the attacker used, you want a clean backup in place and if your last backup isn't clean and it's the only one you have, this means avoidable additional work.

 

Hope this helps.

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Useful thread. I'm another of these not horribly tech-savvy guys.

 

Is there any sort of mechanism or combination of mechanisms that can automate this?

 

I think there was something mentioned about doing it to Dropbox, but I think it's something Michael is going to look into once everything is sorted.

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I have kept quiet on the forums as I wasn't terribly affected by the outage, but this issue actually got me thinking and that's why I wanted to post here:

 

I currently don't make money from my websites, but I still implemented a failover solution that automatically switches me over to a standby site on another host as soon as my shared hosting at MDD goes down. In case of longer outages I still prefer to switch email to the other server manually, but my web site was down an estimated 2 minutes or less when all this happenend. We as clients should always have external backups, as Mike has posted as well.

 

I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to put blame on anyone, stuff happens and I'm sure MDD as a company will emerge from this stronger than ever. I will stay with them.

 

Now then, why am I writing this:

I've been in the hosting industry for a time over a decade ago and I know that those automatic failover systems can be daunting for the not technically inclined, with all the external DNS settings, TTL times, different IPs, server health checks etc. That's why I'm thinking about building a failover service that would be easy-to-use by anyone with any level of expertise as well as affordable. A sort of "insurance for better sleep" haha.

 

It could switch over your website to a customizable standby site (similar to "Sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties and will be back soon.") automatically as soon as it detects an outage on your main server as well as forwarding your email to another account, so you don't lose any messages in the meantime - because the impression I've had in the last few days browsing this forum was that people care about lost emails WAY more that if their website is fully operational, which I completely understand.

 

Here's my question to you guys: Would you be interested in such a service? What would you be willing to pay for it? Would $7 or $8 a month be too high a price for such a system?

 

Any way, just a small idea. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Depending on the account size it should be pretty quick, mine usually is done in less than 5 minutes.

 

Try checking Cpanel - Backup - Click "Download a Full Website Backup" and look for files listed

under "Backups Available for Download", assuming you started a local backup.

 

Thank you for the reply.

 

Nope there is nothing listed in "Backups Available for Download"

 

I followed the instructions in post #2 in this thread.

 

I'll give it another try tomorrow as it's getting late here in Europe.

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Done it.

 

I have also made a Newbies guide if it helps others.

 

https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1589-cpanel-backup-for-newbies/

 

Thank you for taking the time to create the screenshots, good tutorial.

 

I'd also like to have an easy way (for a noob like me) to automate backups, at least of my database of my forum, which is juts over 100Mb. Any simple solutions?

 

Mike has said they'll look into some solutions, I'm hopeful there'll be some way of doing automated backups.

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Thank you for taking the time to create the screenshots, good tutorial.

 

 

Mike has said they'll look into some solutions, I'm hopeful there'll be some way of doing automated backups.

 

No problem. I was doing it for myself, but decided it may help others too.

 

Yes Michael is looking into it: https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1583-major-outage-092118-client-discussion/?p=7435

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Just one thing I'd like to add here that I'm looking into. JetBackup has very recently added the ability to backup directly to a Backblaze B2 bucket:

 

 

https://docs.jetapps.com/jetbackup/backblaze-b2-cloud-storage

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cpanel-backup-to-b2-cloud-storage

I think this would be a great way to copy directly to a relatively inexpensive cloud host and hopefully something MDD will support soon.

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That topic seems to have gone quiet, and so has this one.

 

I really need to automated service to backup my databases.

 

I think the Outage topic will not get any more comments as the problem is over and the backups thing is a separate issue.

 

I would imagine the staff at MDD are taking a well earned break at the moment, but yes it would be nice to see some movement on this thread about automated backups.

 

Unfortunately this forum isn't used that often so I'm thinking wait and see or you could try a ticket.

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