As a system administrator you should always try to keep your system up and running all the time, Its your responsibility for ensuring backup and making it available in case of system crash. A system with no backups is useless as if in any case your system got halt then there’s no way for getting your system back. So its always recommended to have a latest backup for your server.
A good backup strategy should be implemented and which may composed of backup, storage, verification, and restoration. Backup component covers methods for taking backups and about the data which has to be backup. Backup storage covers both terms related to what media you want to take backup and where you want to keep your backup.
You should also verify your backup as its most important factor which is needed to be considered, you should have latest backup available for your system which can be used to restore system if for some reason it get down.
Two main strategies for backups are to be considered : Disaster Recovery and Archival.
Disaster Recovery : These backup are designed for restoring your system to a normal working state. This can be achieved by taking backup of entire system which can be used to restore it on another machine and you can continue with your work.
Archival strategy : It termed as retrieving all backup data you have for a particular server/system and to restoring your system as a effective working system.
Both strategies works in conjunction, while archiving your data you usually reinstall and reconfigure the operating system before restoring the data; this process takes longer time and is more error prone. So you have to be careful while you are working on Archiving your data. You should test your backup strategy before you implement them on working system. You can test Disaster Recovery backup system by restoring your system backup onto a fresh system so that you can confirm that you ca recover your system from an emergency. An archival system can be tested by retrieving files and verifying them, you can crosscheck that you have found the files you need and are readable after system restoration.
If you are into webhosting industry you should take backup of your account/server as frequent as possible. If you are using Linux hosting package you can backup your server/account using cPanel administrative interface.
Using cPanel you can easily take backup of your hosted site, your databases or even your home directory. First of all you need to login to your control panel cPanel. Just try to find “ backup “ icon using which you can initiate backup process for your hosting account. On backup page you have several option available you can download or restore your MySQL Databases and also web data. You have option for Generating Full backup or Downloading full backup on this page. You need to provide backup destination where all your backup files would be stored. You can choose “ Home Directory “ as Backup Destination “ you also need to provide your email address as you will be receiving email once your website backup is completed. That’s all, you just need to proceed by clicking “Generate Backup”. Button and will have to wait till you receive email confirmation. Once you got your confirmation email you can download this backup copy from the location you have specified to your local machine. You will have zipped copy of your backup data stored on the location you have specified while creating backup. You can store this backup copy of your website data on your local machine or can burn it on CD.
Posted under Linux cPanel Hosting, Shared cpanel Hosting, cPanel Hosting, cPanel hosting accounts
This post was written by on October 2, 2008
