Solutions

[Managed Backups]

Managed daily backup service

We offer a managed daily backup service. First we also work with you, the customer, to ensure that the correct data is being backed up. Thereafter, we manage the backups and check that they are working using our own automated system. The system checks that there is some data in the backup, and that the data is changing regularly, otherwise an alert is generated and one of our systems administrators will investigate.

If the backed-up data goes over your pre-paid limit then you will be alerted via email and the backups will stop functioning until the situation has been resolved by you upgrading or by reducing the amount of data to be backed-up.

We offer four main types of backups:

  1. Common directories - in this mode we will take a nightly backup of the following directories: /home, /etc, /var/www, /var/lib/mysql and /var/lib/postgres.

    Please note that we do not recommend this option if you have a very active database since it will capture the data in an inconsistent state. Instead, you should make local backups of your database and use the "Backup directory" option.

  2. Backup directories - in this mode we will take a nightly backup of the contents of /backup or /home/backup. This mode is aimed at users who wish to setup a local backup on their server, which we then duplicate. It is ideal for cPanel/WHM users, which places its backups in /backup.

  3. All directories - in this mode we will take a nightly backup of the contents of all data on the entire server. This is highly inefficient since it will take copies of all system data, which in general there is little point storing. If you are using a Windows server then please contact us before selecting this option.

    Note: Our backups system does not follow symlinks.

  4. Entire Miniserver - this will take a backup of the entire Miniserver's file system. We do not recommend this method for two reasons; First, it is very wasteful and storage-intensive and second, it will take a copy of your Miniserver in an inconsistent state. If you are using this method you should also store local backups, which will be backed-up with everything else but will have a consistent state.

Advanced backup solutions

For more mission-critical backups where active / live data is involved we offer a range of customised solutions. For example, you may wish for there to be a real-time "slaving" of your master database server to a hot-standby in one of our other data centre locations. In the event of a catastrophic failure of your main server we can switch over to the hot-standby with minimal downtime.

Further, some customers have a small set of data which needs historical copies. In that instance, we can setup (locally on your server) historical backups, which themselves then get backed up to our backup servers.


Backup servers

Our backup servers are mostly Dell PE2050s with a single CPU and 6 high-capacity disks in a RAID(6) configuration, which means that any two disks can fail at the same time without data loss. We proactively monitor our backup servers and replace any failed disks immediately. To date, we have had no data loss as a result of hardware failure on our backup servers.