Database back-ups

NetHosted Customer Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 7

I know there are lots of threads about this; mine is to ask a much more basic question that everyone else seems to know the answer to!

Well, maybe I do too. I'm trying to get clear the distinction between what back-ups you do as a web-hosting service and what it's my responsibility to do. I'm just talking about databases here, not web pages.

Presumably you have enough redundancy to make catastrophic data-loss on your side highly unlikely. On the other hand, if I do something stupid like explicitly deleting something I wanted to keep, your back-ups will eventually reflect my deletion. Right so far? I suppose what I'm asking is: how often do you back up, and how long are your back-ups kept for?

Also, regarding data I back up myself, to what extent can I store it on your server? Are there tools to automate this?

Someone else suggested a dedicated forum for back-ups. Sounds like a good idea to me.

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 7017

Hi,

At the moment we have a policy of taking a complete backup of everything once a week. This will very soon be changing to hourly backups with retention stretching into the weeks (this is the first time we've mentioned this so well done on extracting that from news from us!).

You can store anything you like (that doesn't break our TOS) on your webspace. You can take manual backups of your data at anytime via our control panel system. There are no ways we provide to automate this but PHP scripting + cron jobs can be used to make this a regular thing.

Thanks,

Andrew

NetHosted Customer Joined: 13 Jan 2010 Posts: 7

Well I should congratulate you on your step-change in back-up provision! Next question: are your back-ups visible by default, or do users have to ask for them when disaster strikes?

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 7017

Hi,

At the moment they have to be asked for. With the introduction of the new system they will become restorable for users without our intervention.

Thanks,

Andrew

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:04 pm Post subject:

Great news Andrew. I've been thinking I should relook at ways of automating database dumps, but maybe I'll hang on for your new system.

NetHosted Staff Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 7017

It should be a useful system for all. Just to clarify database backups won't be available for end users to restore but all files and folders will and staff can restore databases on users behalf.

Andrew

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:55 pm Post subject:

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