Data backup on Web Hosting Servers

[upback]

When considering a backup strategy for your servers, there are quite a few options, from the control panel integrated tools to third-party applications. However the most convenient way is using the snapshots provided by the hypervisor (if your server is not a physical box of course).
Wondering about your choice and why.

 

[Greenhost.cloud]

Snapshots are useful for creating short-term restore points, but they may not be sufficient if there is a hardware failure on the server. In addition to using snapshots, I also regularly backup server data to other servers for long-term storage. This ensures that in the event of a hardware issue on any server, the data is still accessible on another server.

 

[Saranya Subramaniam]

Hi..
Use Hypervisor Snapshots for quick recovery and Third-Party Backup Solutions for comprehensive, long-term backups.

 

[SharedGrid]

There is no right or wrong answer here, you go for the solution that fits your business (or personal) needs.

Saying that, as a provider, we use per-website backups for Shared and Reseller hosting customers so we can restore individual websites or individual files. A block based 'backup' such as snapshots (A snapshot should not be used as a backup, by the way) doesn't make restoring individual websites or files more difficult.

We take block based backups for VPS customers, since we don't have access to their operating system to do anything else and these are for DR purposes rather than for general restoration.

 

[bubblehost]

The way I do it is to download everything automatically and put it in one big zip folder, ready to be imported if something fails.
I take backups of both MySQL databases and files for websites, and they are safely secured in a backup server.
Nice question!