Database backups

[redtails]

DannyTheNinja suggested I start a thread about this in the administrative section of the forum.


It's impossible to miss that every single file and database entry from TBDL.org has been lost for good. I'm unsure of the details, but it was probably a harddrive failure because such things just happen once every few years. My question is whether or not that event was of any educative value to the administrators of ADISC: are regular (say, weekly, if not daily) database and file backups being made? Database backups seem pretty logical, but file backups should take place because of all the modified code and of course the gallery..

Thank you for your time

 

[Corri]

TBDL was wiped due to human error. However, I do believe that Moo does regular backups.

 

[redtails]

Yes yes, everyone "believes" backups are being made.. I'll just wait for a definitive answer, or until this breaks down, which one is sooner.

 

[andysetra]

TBDL was wiped due to human error. However, I do believe that Moo does regular backups.

The cause is irrelevant. Just because it shouldn't have happened, doesn't mean it couldn't happen again. If I remember right, one of the reasons why backups weren't done to that scale was that it was too bandwidth intense.. (correct me if I'm wrong).

Either way, I hope there are some sort of backups being kept. I don't think the community could take another blast like that...

 

[redtails]

The cause is irrelevant. Just because it shouldn't have happened, doesn't mean it couldn't happen again. If I remember right, one of the reasons why backups weren't done to that scale was that it was too bandwidth intense.. (correct me if I'm wrong).

Either way, I hope there are some sort of backups being kept. I don't think the community could take another blast like that...

You're pretty accurate, Andysetra, as it involves copying the entire site to someone's (sys op's) harddrive.. Although, this is a dedicated server for as far as I know. I don't believe we have bandwidth issues right now, and if bandwidth issues are a problem there's something called an "incremental backup" which involves only backing up the files that have changed. I also believe (if it is a dedicated server) there's an option to zip the backup before downloading it to Moo's computer. I've done that before with phpmyadmin backups, it saves tens of mbs of bandwidth

It's not a high price to pay to prevent the past from happening all over again, is it

 

[h3g3l]

There are two parts to a site backup:
1. Database
2. File System

I'd wager Moo is aware of both these things, based on an old Apache tuning discussion we had ages ago. Part 2, of course, is the doing of it.

A crontab entry and short script could take care of these things and automate the process to the point where the "offsite" system would just have to be up and running.

As ZFS is brought into production across the world, it will be interesting to see what happens in pockets like this: not enterprise, and not SOHO, but somewhere in between.

 

[andysetra]

You're pretty accurate, Andysetra, as it involves copying the entire site to someone's (sys op's) harddrive.. Although, this is a dedicated server for as far as I know. I don't believe we have bandwidth issues right now, and if bandwidth issues are a problem there's something called an "incremental backup" which involves only backing up the files that have changed. I also believe (if it is a dedicated server) there's an option to zip the backup before downloading it to Moo's computer. I've done that before with phpmyadmin backups, it saves tens of mbs of bandwidth

It's not a high price to pay to prevent the past from happening all over again, is it

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was bandwidth issues on the user side, not the server side

But an incremental backup would make sense. Way back when, I remember (phpbb I think) let me export full or incremental backups including the database from the admin panel, so I'm sure there is a way...

 

[Moo]

I do the backups, along with some other tasks.
Backups are made, though not on a regular schedule.
The last backup was done in January, and the next one is tomorrow.

 

[andysetra]

I do the backups, along with some other tasks.
Backups are made, though not on a regular schedule.
The last backup was done in January, and the next one is tomorrow.

You've made me sleep better at night...thanks, RJ

 

[Deleted member 221]

if you want to know what happened to the old tbdl site, i posted that in one of my threads, or the threaad moo posted about what happened to tbdl
if you don't mind me asking
what is the bandwidth of this website, is it a dedicated server, and what is it's bandwidth limit?
if you can answer these questions i will say thanks.

as i have a friend of a friend who just happens to own the world of warcraft private server; world of chris, and he excedes his limit of 1 TB of bandwidth.

oh and backups are vital, as we learn't from our previous community that unhappily crashed *sighs*.

 

[redtails]

if you want to know what happened to the old tbdl site, i posted that in one of my threads, or the threaad moo posted about what happened to tbdl
if you don't mind me asking
what is the bandwidth of this website, is it a dedicated server, and what is it's bandwidth limit?
if you can answer these questions i will say thanks.

as i have a friend of a friend who just happens to own the world of warcraft private server; world of chris, and he exceeds his limit of 1 TB of bandwidth.

oh and backups are vital, as we learn't from our previous community that unhappily crashed *sighs*.

Their host is GoDaddy.com, their monthly costs are 80$/m, and whois says it's a dedicated host. So I'm guessing Moo got the economy pack ( Dedicated Server, Customize & Configure Yours Today ) which bundles with 500gb of traffic per month.

Does your friend's gaming server host update files and installation files? Because I heard private servers can't serve more than around 64 people simultaneously, and I doubt you can generate a terabyte of bandwidth per month just by playing (A few quick calculations show that's about 6kb/sec/player if there's 1000gb/m and 64 players online constantly.

 

[recovery]

Their host is GoDaddy.com, their monthly costs are 80$/m, and whois says it's a dedicated host. So I'm guessing Moo got the economy pack ( Dedicated Server, Customize & Configure Yours Today ) which bundles with 500gb of traffic per month.

The Registrar for ADISC.org is GoDaddy, And so is the email. However the Server itself goes else Where (I worked it out), be a jiffy! *30 seconds later*, Yeah it looks like serve.com it's hosted with. Cheaper than GoDaddy, as for the service, can't say I ever used either .

Registrar != Host. Otherwise I never knew my registrars offered hosting :S.

But it's all dedicated, for a site this size. It would be silly not to.

 

[redtails]

But it's all dedicated, for a site this size. It would be silly not to.

I hope the site gets a lot bigger than this because quite frankly I don't think it's very big. It's nice we have our own dedicated server, though. Mainly because vbulletin is known for its enormous cpu usage when several people are browsing the forum