Backup takes too many resources

[optize]

I'm sure this has been an issue many times, however I'm trying to see what options we have here.

We have 30+ cPanel boxes, and every night the cpu spikes for hours while it tars up the data, etc.

What other methods are people using to backup their cPanel boxes, without making the box useless for hours?

[brianoz]

From what I can tell, rsync is one of the best options. We can backup one machine (500 approx accounts) in about 20-30 minutes (CPU utilisation is low on the source machine). You should still run the cPanel tarball backup every now and then though.

I have an rsync-based script called cpmr which may help - it grabs a cPanel system in one lump. See the cpmr paragraph on www.whitedoggreenfrog.com/scripts/

The other thing that may help is upgrading your boxes to the latest cPanel which supposedly has some speed improvements.

[pueblosnet]

hello brianoz! with rsync will be the mysql databases copied too? thanks.

[brianoz]

Yes, databases are copied too, if you use a script that copies /var/lib/mysql.

If you want to absolutely guarantee database integrity, you should ensure mysql is shut down while you do the rsync.

[eth00]

Yeah be very careful about only rsync'ing mysql. If you have a very active DB chances are decent it will become corrupt. It should be fine as long as the DB is not written to while the copy is being done. For smaller files the chance is less but for a large and active forum it becomes harder.

Anyways yeah just be careful with rsync and mysql!

[ljesh]

We make incremental backups from cpanel to the second drive and then rsync the second drive content to offsite server. Is this "dangerous" for mysql?

[eth00]

We make incremental backups from cpanel to the second drive and then rsync the second drive content to offsite server. Is this "dangerous" for mysql?

No, the rsync won't hurt the live MySQL at all.

The only problem comes if you are rsyncing the /var/lib/mysql directory (the dump files are fine) and a write happens to the file while doing the copy.

You can rsync dumps just fine, or even the mysql dir while it is stopped. Rsync works fine most times but on a large DB with a busy site it will most likely end up corrupted if you rsync the dir itself.