Off-site backups - Dedicated Server Hosting | VPS Hosting

kirkas · #1 (**permalink**) 06-17-09, 12:06

What do you suppose is the best way to make off-site backups? Using RAID arrays is all well and good (and recommended, btw), but it's also good practice to at least have backups stored somewhere off-site (and probably in a different data center) just in case of those rare "acts of God" things that could totally wipe out your server.

I'm not asking for backup companies here, rather, I want to know what the best method is for performing backups. The two I've heard about are r1soft and rsync, but I don't really know much about them aside from their name, so I'm wondering if you can educate me. Which is the best to use for creating off-site backups?

Shane Phillips · #2 (**permalink**) 06-17-09, 16:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by kirkas

What do you suppose is the best way to make off-site backups? Using RAID arrays is all well and good (and recommended, btw), but it's also good practice to at least have backups stored somewhere off-site (and probably in a different data center) just in case of those rare "acts of God" things that could totally wipe out your server.

I'm not asking for backup companies here, rather, I want to know what the best method is for performing backups. The two I've heard about are r1soft and rsync, but I don't really know much about them aside from their name, so I'm wondering if you can educate me. Which is the best to use for creating off-site backups?

Well, i suppose you have almost covered all corners of Off-site backup solutions.

Regards,

Shane Phillips

surreality · #3 (**permalink**) 06-19-09, 09:18

Rsync is supposedly the best. At least, it's the most popular now. Haven't used it myself because the only off-site backup I have is on my PC (yeah yeah, I know).

Vertigo · #4 (**permalink**) 06-19-09, 14:28

I'll have to go with rsync as well. It's easy to use and works really well for backups. Heck, you can even install rsync on your PC and backup things that way.

Jenny Walker · #5 (**permalink**) 06-19-09, 23:54

Does FTP count? I can't really afford a dedicated off-site backup solution, so I kinda just hope nothing really bad happens. That's one reason why I went with a managed host like BODhost — to make sure that it'll be unlikely for something bad to really happen. I do backup some critical files and databases onto my computer, though.

Which reminds me — they're a bit out of date...

gazzie · #6 (**permalink**) 06-20-09, 04:57

Go with rsync. I understand that r1soft can be incredibly slow at times, and that buagent and buserver (r1soft's software that records what has changed and writes what has changed, respectively) can be a huge resource hog.

userdan · #7 (**permalink**) 06-20-09, 06:16

Using rsync and ssh together for making backups securely is the best option, in my opinion. It's not perfect — it can consume too much memory or use to many I/O operations should too many files need to be synchronized in a single run — but since nothing really is perfect, rsync works well enough.

kirkas · #8 (**permalink**) 06-21-09, 01:16

So r1soft uses a lot of resources? I didn't know that. I also didn't know that you could use rsync with ssh. I had heard that rsync was not secure, but if you can use ssh with it, then perhaps it's secure enough. Guess I might as well give it a try. There are some affordable offsite backup solutions available out there, I think.

bluetrance05 · #9 (**permalink**) 06-29-09, 22:56

I have heard of RAID system and it is good in storing off-site back up datas, but you can save them as well in your ZIP disk, streamer tape, CD/DVD disc, hard disk drive, floppy disk and so on. You can also use antivirus system and firewall to prevent others accessing your data from the internet.