How do you backup your customers' data?

[Matt]

Let's say you have a dedicated server with only a 120GB hard disk inside, how would you backup your customers' data on the cpanel server?

Do you create a partition and store the backups on it or do you get another hard disk just for the backups?

I'm on my first dedicated server and I'm confused whether to purchase additional hardware just for the backups or leave it on another partition.

[Tony]

You can do it either way. I prefer a seperate disk in case of disk failure. Either way you will want to make sure you have an off-server/off-site backup solution in place (i.e. don't have all of your backups in the same datacenter.)

[Hostbiz]

There are many way. I use a separate hard drive to hold my backups. I also use another product to backups to another server (just in case of major failure).

Another good alternative is a backup server account. One I have used is bqbackup.com They have good prices and service. I am sure there are many others, but this is the only company that I have experience with.

[MikeR]

http://www.acunett.com/backup/

http://sagonet.com/backup.php

[Gabe]

Daily backups to secondary disk in the same server. Weekly backups off-server.

Wouldn't ever risk leaving everything on the same server. When we first started out we just had 2 disks (1 for backup) and after a faulty motherboard messed up both disks at once we decided never to risk it again!

[John]

We backup to a secondary hard disk and off-site the data. Protects us against hardware failure and even the loss of a facility.

[HostingGuy]

Daily backup to secondary hard drive using cPanel, then upload latest backup files to a backup server in another datacenter via FTP twice a month.

The FTP backup script provided by webhostgear.com comes in handy

[Tom]

We have a 2nd harddrive in each server, and rsync daily offsite to a backup server.

[Chris]

I backup to a second drive in the server daily and daily to a remore site using rsync.


rsync -az --delete --force /source/directory user@remotehost:/backup/directory

Need to set up keypair authentication to avoind needing to type passwords

It only copies the files that change.
It uses ssh encryption
It compresses that data.

And you can backup to a home computer at night ove a DSL connection for your offsite backup. That's what I do.

[-DataCenter-]

I'm new at running a dedicated server, so excuse this lame question but, "How" Do you create the back up? Is there backup software needed? If so, names of any? If not, what is the command (unix) to use to create a back up?

I have two Harddrives 150gbs each, and I'm running Fedora Core 3 w/ Cpanel/WHM.

Or does anyone know of a tutorial around that can explain how to create a back up for unix , thank you.