Backing up

[ricktrip]

I have a couple of questions about back ups.

First, if a FQ server goes bad, does FQ have back ups so that the lost server data can be restored?

Second, since I need to back up the data I store on FQ servers anyway, can anyone recommend software that will run on a Mac that I could purchase? Any suggestions on back up and restoration strategies would also be appreciated.

Rick

[sheila]

As noted in the following Knowledgebase article, we do nightly backups:
https://service.FutureQuest.net/kb425

However, they are for FutureQuest purposes only in the case of a system failure. Clients are encouraged to maintain their own backups for their own purposes.

Depending on the website, you may simply be able to maintain a local backup using your FTP client. However, if you have a dynamic site that uses MySQL you might need to make database backups. Sometimes this can be automated.

Maybe give some details about your site and how it is set up (for example is it a blog that uses MySQL?), so that people can give more specific advice for your setup.

[ricktrip]

I don't use MySQL; Perl is enough of a learning cure for me, since I am an educator, not a professional programmer. I have a few hundred small files (some binary, some text) and I expect that number to run into the thousands in a couple of years.

[sheila]

So do you have anything dynamic on the website...i.e. anything that changes the content of your site in an automated fashion when you aren't actively working on it to make changes yourself?

If not, then you can just maintain a local backup copy when you work on the site. There wouldn't be any need to use special backup software or any automated backup processes.

If you have some kind of automation on the site that changes the site files, then give a bit of detail about that, perhaps?

[Kevin]

BTW, we have had to use our backups before:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=132221
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23599

Unfortunately bad things do happen and RAID doesn't avoid all of them.

[ricktrip]

Thanks, Sheila and Kevin, for you helpful comments.

Students take quizzes on my site, so in this sense there are automatic changes as their responses are scored and stored. None of these files are large, but there are many of them and changes are frequent. All of this data is stored above the www level. Below that level my web design software keeps a backup on my computer.

[sheila]

Well, here are a couple of old discussions in these forums that may give you some ideas:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25579&highlight=backup+script
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?t=25377&highlight=backup+script

Maybe some others will chip in a few suggestions also.

[ricktrip]

Thanks! To a beginner like me, all ideas are food for thought!

[Matt]

Hello Rick,

If you are storing the files to a centralized location and the rest of the website remains static, then you can create a script that periodically archives that directory (using cron) and rely on your local FTP backup for the static content.

I bet there are sample cron scripts posted either here in the forums or in the FutureQuest knowledge base that you can use with few modifications. Set up a cron script to run every day or every week, then download the archives monthly via FTP (if they're big) or have the cron script e-mail them to you as an attachment.

-Matt

[Kevin]

Or, since you are on a Mac you can use rsync. You can just rsync the whole thing to your local system on a daily basis. Rsync will automatically ignore the files that haven't changed.

Something like: rsync -vaz yourdomain:/big/dom/xdom /place/to/backup/to

[ricktrip]

Now there's a creative idea, Matt, and possibly not one that would overwhelm me with a steep learning curve.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[ricktrip]

Kevin, that REALLY interesting. I'm so glad my Mac has such power, though I'm going to have to dig into the Terminal to check this out -- something I have rarely done!