Do you pay to backup your forum?

[Shawn Gossman]

Are you paying for your hosting service or another service to backup your forum?

Is there a guarantee stated in using their service? Or does the fine print say you're screwed (more or less) if it doesn't work?

What are the best-paid backup services out there?

 

[Dilip]

No, I am not paying extra. I have a solid backup plan though.

 

[aerodynamic]

My host has Acronis Backup installed, and so we get daily free back ups.

 

[Forums Forever]

I do not pay extra to have my forum backed up. I take care of that on my own with a few scripts.

 

[Elseb]

Pretty sure my paid plan has a backup included so shouldn't ever be a problem. I'm actually going to check that now!

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Pretty sure my paid plan has a backup included so shouldn't ever be a problem. I'm actually going to check that now!

Just make sure you are also doing backups

My hosting service offers basic backups for free.

But they offer advanced ones with more features as a paid addon.

 

[secretprojects]

The essential thing about a good backup is offsiting. This still applies in the cloud world.

By all means, utilise a free backup service by your host as a 'belt and braces' approach and as a "OS recovery" backup. But what if your hosting company goes bust? Good luck retrieving your backups to take your forum somewhere else. Equally, if hackers break into your hosting company and destroy or ransomware their files, will your backups be spared?

The only sensible backup plan is one that copies data outside of your hosting company.

I use some simple scripts to rsync my forum database and files daily to my home Linux server, as it is totally free for me. You can pay for something similar - rsync.net is $10/month for 680GB of space, with 7 daily snapshots.

I have backups of my home Linux server already sorted out, so I backup the VPS backups additionally to another cloud provider via my home Linux server backup, but that's a secondary thing.

I've migrated my forum many times from server to server using my backups as the source, which means I know the methodology is good.

 

[secretprojects]

Pretty sure my paid plan has a backup included so shouldn't ever be a problem. I'm actually going to check that now!

When that datacentre in Europe went up in flames, a lot of people realised their paid plan did NOT include backups, so always be sure, and always test it works.

 

[Uncrowned Guard]

My hosting plan includes weekly backups for free, but I also do my own backups as a backup to those.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

When that datacentre in Europe went up in flames, a lot of people realised their paid plan did NOT include backups, so always be sure, and always test it works.

And always back it up yourself too.

It's good to make three backups.

You can replace backups with new ones, too.

 

[Tracy]

ANYONE that trusts their hosting provider to perform quality backups is simply asking to take it up the arse without any lubricant. In the over a decade of hosting and administrating a site.... I've seen WAY to many people get screwed because they simply failed to protect themselves and then were surpised hen the got "forked" over.
YOUR job as an admin is to make SURE that YOUR backups are done in a valid manner.

#!/bin/bash
####################################
#
# Backup for export to remote site script.
#
####################################
mysqldump_location="/path_to_where/you_want_to_store/the backup"
/usr/bin/mysqldump --opt yourdb_name --default-character-set=utf8mb4 > $mysqldump_location/Whatever_you_want_to_call_the_dump.SQL

# What to backup.
backup_files="/directory_to_your_home_html/location"
# Where to backup to.
dest="/where/to/put/your/backups"
# Create archive filename.
day=$(date +%A)
hostname=$(hostname -s)
archive_file="Whatever_you_want_to_name_it-$day.zip"
# Print start status message.
#echo "Backing up $backup_files to $dest/$archive_file"
#date
#echo
# Backup the files using ZIP.
zip -r $dest/$archive_file $backup_files
rm -f $mysqldump_location/The_DB_dump_name_use_above.SQL

The above does require SSH access... if you don't have that ability...then you are on your own to make sure you have valid backups.
I then use macOS's Automation to run Transmit and pull the archives into my local Mac Mini, then I distribute them to two external hard drives and then ship them to a small VPS I also have for off-site storage.