Rick, A while back you mentioned VULTR.com as a good server host. I signed on with them a year or so ago, and I set up a WC app which is running fine. I like Vultr. But I never set up a backup system. I could use VULTR's built in backups, but would prefer something like Dropbox or similar. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks, Joel Aiken
You can take snapshots, which capture the entire server. If the server bombs you can go back to a snapshot.
On my machine I do a local backup every morning at 2am. I basically do a local file backup into a folder, then zip it up. The process is basically a PowerShell script that shuts down apps and services one at a time, copies files, then brings things back up.
This backup is around 2gb in size and I take that file and then push it up to Azure into a backup folder. I do rotating daily backups for the week and a monthly snapshot that I update every month - so on Azure there are typically 8 backups stored, plus occasionally I do an archive backup. This backup holds:
- My applications that are running on the server (ie. ASP.NET/Web Connection Apps)
- Utility folder
- Admin folder
- Data
This holds everything that has value so I can rebuild from this. It won't be quick, but can be done in a few hours if a total failure occurs...
It's very low tech and I've tested it out once by taking the rescue data and installing a new box. As said it took about 2 hours to get a new machine up and running with the apps and data again which is reasonable for me and total failure.
The biggest issue with this approach is that you need a bit of disk space - you need to be able to basically duplicate everything that you plan to back up, plus create the zip file. I think for me this ends up being close to 10gb that I have to make sure I have available for this to work. But this should be easier now, that Vultr allows for secondary storage to be added. I may end up moving my backups and backup processing there eventually.
+++ Rick ---
Rick, Thanks for your reply. I'm planning to use the "snapshot" backup and then keep your backup technique handy when I get ready to improve on the backup. Joel Aiken