backup strategy

[kakshaks]

Hi All
Im looking for some advice on what might be the best backup strategy for my ecommerce Actinic V10 site. A regular snapshot was fine but now I am using videos the size of the snapshot is becoming too large, especially as I like to keep plenty of older files.
I would be interested to hear peoples suggestions on a good, sound strategy. My current snapshot size is approx 300Mb.
Thanks in advance.

[NormanRouxel]

A Snapshot contains all the site files so you'll end up backing up all those video files every time you Snapshot, even though they haven't changed.

Consider using quality backup software to make a set of incremental or differential backups of your entire system. The first backup will take some time but subsequent ones will be finished in tens of minutes. This type of software only backs up changed files so your videos won't add to backup time after the first run.

I use Acronis True Image Home.

And, of course, backup to NAS box using at least RAID 1. So the backup drive has some redundancy if one of its drives fails.

NAS boxes live down a length of LAN cable so you cpould place it well away from the main system so hopefully a flood / fire, etc. don't take out both. No point backing up if you can't be sure that your data is safe.

Portable USB drives only contain one disk which isn't really a safe place to keep precious data.

[Darren B]

as above and

There are many NAS drives out there one i have been happy with and have a couple are the buffalo link stations, with various raid options and plenty of capacity.

As norman said, our NAS is down the end of a LAN so hopefully a bit better protected, buffalo link stations are also capable of backing up to other link stations so you can ensure extra redundancy.

Darren

[kakshaks]

Thanks Norman, didnt realise it was as easy as that. So, bottom line, as long as I can install Actinic and recover the full contents of Site1 folder, Im sorted?

[NormanRouxel]

Absolutely. That and every other file on your system is safe.

P.S. A few hours ago I killed one of my test sites. No idea how. After a few minutes puzzling over what I'd done without finding the problem, I cranked up Acronis and replaced it with yesterdays complete copy. Took about a minute.

[kakshaks]

Ok Norman, they say that immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I have downloaded the software, want to recommend a good NAS drive?
Thanks again
K

[Darren B]

want to recommend a good nas drive?
Thanks again
k

buffalo............ http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...rage/business/

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/...-small-office/

[Sean Williams]

As the other guys have said.
We only take snapshots whenever anything is changed in the site itself; if it's just product data or orders that are different each day, we just backup the database at the end of the day.
Of course, that doesn't include any new images or other files, so a snapshot would be necessary.
All data is present on the PC, copied to the RAID 1 NAS in another room and also copied to a portable hard drive and removed from site at the end of each day - an Iomega eGo.
The NAS is a Qnap.
Both been reliable.
I take Norman's point about the portable drive being only one HDD though ....
The idea of using Acronis daily is very good - may well do that ourselves.
We do the Acronis thing for the whole PC, so if the drive karks, we can have the OS back up and running in about half an hour.

[chris ashdown]

Like Sean we back up the databases using Jan's free software and have it running every hour, it only makes a backup if the site has changes and finds all sites if running multi site,

You still need a snapshot when changing something on the site, so can normally get away with just one a week

[Sean Williams]

Thanks Chris - didn't know Jan had free software - I'll check that out as it would save us the tedium of daily backing up!

[Sean Williams]

Can only find a backup tool for the orders database Chris - is there one for the whole database? Could you (or someone else) point me in the right direction - tks?

[NormanRouxel]

A good NAS Drive?

I work from 2 locations and have:-

1) My newest system (this May). A Synology Diskstation DS411J bare unit that I added 3 Samsung F4 EcoGreen 2Tb drives to. That gives me around 4Tb of RAID 5 storage. Enough storage for a lot of backups and I can also backup movies from my PVR without worrying too much about the space used.

2) Older location. An IoMega StoreCenter iX2 with 2 x 1Tb drives in RAID1.

[chris ashdown]

Can only find a backup tool for the orders database Chris - is there one for the whole database? Could you (or someone else) point me in the right direction - tks?

Thats the one Easy Orders Backup, logs the whole database in a zip file

[Sean Williams]

Thank you Chris ;o)