Have you lost your VPS data before?Those are all related question that every linux admin server get while managing their VPS/DEDICATED Servers.
Never... and I like it that way
Once... it still hurts
Several times... how did you know?
If you invest a little time into reading and testing this resource you’ll not only do a much better job of backing up your VPS, but save yourself a lot of time and effort in the process — not to mention, you’ll avoid the costly traps that most newbie webmasters-turned-admins fall into.
Could this happen to you? Even if you are a home user, almost one third of you have lost all of your files due to circumstances beyond your control, like a hard disk drive crash. If you then tried to get a quote from a data recovery service, you likely gasped at the price. There are more severe consequences for businesses – according to a Price Waterhouse Coopers survey a single incident of data loss costs businesses an average of $10,000. You can say I put that to test myself – last time I lost my e-mails, it was dearer than $10,000 to get everything back on track.
99% of VPS owners don’t have a reliable backup strategy for their server. Interestingly, 99% of hosting companies don’t mention this – they are too interested in getting you boarded and unloading any responsibility for your data.
Server backup is not really that difficult. It just takes a little bit of effort, a little bit of thought, and a fair amount of resources. It is crucial to understand that online backup is a form of long-term insurance to protect your data against loss. It can take weeks or months to design a successful website or Internet service and to get into the search engines, and years to develop a strong customer/visitor base. On the other hand, it takes one poorly managed hardware upgrade, or server migration, or transition to another provider, to waste it all and start painstakingly from bits and pieces scattered on your developers’ hard drives or sent over public e-mail addresses. But don’t be overwhelmed by the potential consequences of such a disaster. Having a lot to lose is a sign of wealth and prosperity and by taking your time to visit this site you are making big steps towards protecting this lot.
If you are posting it on the Internet, make sure you’re hosting it right. The Internet is great for meeting many people, but this is a two-way road. By all means, test the 3USD/mo shared hosting offers from the likes of Hostgator, Bluehost or Lunar Pages. They have their benefits. But when your needs grow, get a virtual private server or dedicated hardware behind your website. Nothing turns people away more than a slow and panting webserver, with the potential bonus of seeing your account suspended for consuming too many CPU cycles, bandwidth or disk space while on a so-called UNLIMITED hosting plan.
Understand that hosting companies lose data every day. We all wish that were not true, yet we know these companies rely on hardware, software and people just like everybody else. The hidden ingredient is luck – some got away with it when losing data – backups worked or their customers did not complain.
Be responsible for your business. You are just a customer to your service provider. Sometimes it is simply not worth to them to help you recover data or restore your server. Have a backup plan and triggers in place to know when it’s time to look for a new host.
Keep your backup solution in working order. A disaster can happen any time, be it during the night, weekend or the few days far from civilisation you call holiday. Backups that stalled for months are like expired milk. You get sick opening them.
Automate your website. There is no excuse for doing certain tasks manually. Put a price on your time and start acting as your own employer. Is your manual backup procedure (done timely and thoroughly, remember), worth 30min/day every day?
Consider paying for getting good backup. We can all design plans and solutions. Doing it right is a different story.
Document your configuration and backup solution. Backups tend to be protected with almost unbreakable algorithms. Trying to restore without the password to your data is an expensive way of testing that privacy claim.
Think about implementing your own remote backup solution. There is a growing market for offsite backup. You can leverage on your experience to partner with a service provider like vps-backup.com or start your own venture.
Don’t be too shy to discuss your concerns. If you can imagine a scary scenario, it might happen. Besides figuring out what to do yourself, try talking to others and pooling resources together.
Read the rest of this page. Assuming I haven’t completely turned your brain to mush with all of the above verbiage, read on. The rest of this page explains in more detail what the site does, and how it does it.
What is the difference between online and traditional backup?
Traditionally, you backup your server to a disk or tape attached to it, then you ship that copy away (offsite). Since a virtual or dedicated server is hosted in someone’s data centre, most of them try to backup locally for their peace of mind and yours. Sometimes you can download those backups to your home computer and have sort of a DIY offsite backup solution. I give you space on my own backup server and the tools to take backups and upload them on it automatically. In the end, you get the best of two worlds.
How VPS backup works
In the event of a disaster (failed updates, hacked server or data lost in a hardware incident), you can safely restore the files back to a previous state. Alternatively, if you took a backup before changing your hosting company, you can restore the files to the “new” server and have your website back online with minimal downtime and effort.
Case when we need VPS Backup server :
Our filesharing service relies on a VPS to keep track of users and files distributed over several servers in different locations. As a start-up, we are on a tight operation and backup costs were a constant source of concern before..
When I moved my online store from eBay to a Linux VPS with Zencart, I never had time to think about backups. After two days of downtime following a hardware crash of our host server, a common friend recommended Garrett for a chat about backups. Next time we will be prepared!
Our server had been deleted in an attack on our hosting provider. It took them days to recover from backups, while our SMS billing service was back online in less than 10 hours on a new server. On a single event we avoided a loss worth hundreds of times the cost of the backup service.
Is offsite backup better than onsite backup?
Some experts will say that onsite solutions are faster, especially on restoring large files or disaster recovery (restoring the server data completely). This is partially true due to the high transfer speeds achievable over the LAN or with direct connected technologies (iSCSI, SAS or FC), on the condition that LARGE amounts of data need to be restored. Since most VPS have rather small disks by modern standards (10GB to 100GB), and given the high compression of data used by vps-backup.com, offsite backups can deliver perfectly comparable results and retain better granularity and control over the restoration process.
My rule of thumb is, if I want to avoid keeping all the eggs in the same basket, or better, in the same building, I choose offsite backups. Running and monitoring your backups is not fail proof. My servers have respectable uptime, and I took the common collection of steps to instill some redundancy to the service (RAID1, multiple connections, replication server etc). Yet I am still exposed to black swans and perfect storms and any other acronym used by Service Providers to explain their downtime. This service does not come with an SLA, but with a lot of goodwill and my own business at stake along with yours. Enough said – if anything fails, do your best to let me know and I will do the same for you. This is a lot better than what banks are offering you, by the way – and how many of us manage to avoid banks these days?
Where to find a good offer unmanage VPS( less than $4 at least 40GB). You will need the VPS for a remote back-up of your existing client's website. So no cpanel or directadmin needed. Webmin - even without Virtualmin is enough for this task. It just a backup server, right?
If you purchase a VPS does it include the basic linux installations(like php,mysql,web server,FTP server). Since its unmanaged, is it vulnerable to some attacks even if only the FTP server is started? Yes, even if you're simply running an FTPd, you are susceptible to exploits.
Your budget makes you vulnerable to problems like low quality of support, slow connection speed due to overselling, occasionally data loss etc. I would suggest that if you really need to get your data intact you ought to raise a little and go for a good company
Well, you can always try http://www.lowendbox.com/ to find some cheap VPS, but a $4 VPS for 40gb of space is not something I'd rely on as your only "Backup" solution. It's definitely feasible for VPS used as backup server. Just be sure to do your research. Usually an unmanaged VPS is not safe you need to secure it. You will need to ask a company to secure it for you otherwise sooner or later you will get into trouble. Instead of having the backup server as your fall back just use the server as a backup solution. Depending on what you are running use rsync or ftp backup methods to just backup your files and data to your spare $4 VPS. Or just spend a little more on the main VPS you have an go with a host that makes backups daily. I have had good success with Hostigation as a backup VPS. It is < $4/mo, has good uptime, and has been relatively reliable.
They are unmanaged, which really means self-managed. That is, YOU are responsible for everything inside your container.
In my opinion, if you do backups from your live server frequent enough, you can live with occasional data loss. What is the probability of your backup VPS and your live VPS going out at exactly the same time? Also, if you're using it purely as a backup server, what support do you need?
Speed is the only factor you mentioned that could be important. If you do get a live server failure and need to restore from a backup, you want to do it as fast as possible. So I agree, this is an important factor. Having said that, I'd still advocate Hostigation. I've gotten good speeds and reliable uptime from them.
If the backup VPS is going to be used ONLY for your client's backup of his website, you can save quite a bit by going with a low memory VPS designed for this purpose. I have a different plan at Hostigation.com, but check out their backup VPS plans ... generous disk space with low RAM, and low cost. I agree with the others here who have said this is a good option. If you want to do more with the box, then a $5.95 VPS from Burst.net would work; but you can't come whining back here complaining that they didn't help you set up BeJeweled on it. These inexpensive VPS are absolutely un managed (or self-managed). There are $10 a month backup services like BQBackup that do it for you. That might be a way to get it done without having to worry about securing and maintaining the VPS. I am checking http://virpus.com/?vps-backup-cheap, not sure if they are good company, but they have a daily back-up. I rsync my reseller host to VPS. Or VPS to VPS only. My method of doing this requires root access to each server to set up SSH keys, which you couldn't do with your reseller host. But *I think* you could set up cPanel/WHM backups using remote FTP to your VPS. Security is really an issue, for now if you are at low budget. But you will need to have my own back up too, better be safe. Since you are the one dealing with your clients.
First off, I highly recommend a managed VPS since if you were new to VPS's. Unmanaged is more tuned for experienced users . Usually unmanaged linux VPS do not come with the installations you mentioned. I agree that a bit of knowledge is required to properly secure your server. Unbelievebly however, still one of the most popular reasons for a VPS to be compromised is a weak password - Always make sure this is changed (to a good one) as soon as you first log in to any unmanaged VPS.
You usually get your choice of OS (CentOS, Debian, etc). Usually, you don't have PHP, MySQL or a webserver such as Apache installed, and the host won't help you install these. Expect to spend from 10 to 30 hours learning how to set things up and secure them, with several "OS reinstalls" from the VPS control panel (at least, that was my experience with my first self-managed VPS). And there's on-going maintenance as well. For my own hosting accounts I use a managed VPS from a good provider and pay the extra. I use self-managed VPS for some special projects and my DNS cluster. I could save some money by using a self managed VPS for my hosting accounts, but the time savings and reduced hassle factor makes a managed VPS a much better solution for me.
I don't know if you've looked at backup services like VPS-Backup.com , or BQBackup (http://www.bqbackup.com/) or WebbyCart (http://www.webbycart.com/backup.htm). For $5 to $10 a month you can get automated, hassle free backup services without the time investment of setting up your own VPS. I think WebbyCart is ok, you only need a pure ftpd for back-up from your current host. Also you can use WHMEasyBackup to automatically back-up all accounts. They are also using Rsync technology
Update us later and let us know how it works for you. It's a less complicated solution that still provides the benefits of having a separate backup in a separate geographical location.
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