Server Backup

Hi

One of my customers (web site owner) asked me if the web site was backup regularly.

I was wondering what’s the timeframe of backups on shared hosting is and what is the setup for the fault tolerance (Raid 5 with how many hard drives?)

I ask it here because It's not a rushing question.

Thanks

bump ?

This Kbase article indicates backups occur hourly.

But remember, the snapshots are not the same as backups, like on tape or other media. If a change is made and lasts for more than a couple weeks, you might be in a bind if you need to reverse it and don't have your own backups, as the referenced page states:

"you should ALWAYS keep your OWN backup copies of everything of any importance to you no matter what."

And don't forget separate backups of databases...

Good luck,

BobS

We use RAIDed file servers and our hosted data is spread across a bunch of them. The data on any single hosting server may be spread across several separate file servers and each of those file servers is completely redundant.

The filesystem snapshots are done several times a day but they are only stored for up to two weeks. We do have longer term backups in case of catastrophic failure but we would not go onto them to look for a specific file you may have lost as it's a big task to do so.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

Thanks for the reply.

Well I was just wondering in case of problem of the server. My last hoster had 2 crash in 3 years, and backup was put back with often more than 1 month old.

Yes I have all my backup on my hard drive, but it's often hard to do an up to date backup of Databases. This is wht I wanted to know.

Thanks

Our customer mysql databases are backed up by a separate system daily. In rare cases we may have to use data older than 24 hours for a restore, but never as old as a month.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder