Alternative to R1Soft that doesn't slow down

[DennisMidjord]

Hi,

We're looking for an alternative to R1Soft. We're currently using R1Soft to offer our customers backups from the last 30 days, but R1Soft takes longer and longer to finish backups, and now we've come to the point where backup fails every other day because the first backup doesn't finish. It takes more than 24 hours to backup 60GB of changed files. We've been advised by R1Soft to create new disk safes every few months, but that's simply not a viable solution.

We've been looking a bit at JetBackup, but we'd like to hear from someone with experience using them. Does backups slow down over time? Did you experience any issues?

We're also open to other suggestions!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

I couldn't find any existing feedback on that company here on the cPanel Forums. You may want to seek out feedback on other forums such as WebHostingTalk as well.

Thanks!

 

[DennisMidjord]

Hi,

The post isn't limited to JetBackup - that was just the first company that caught our eye. Design-wise, they look a lot better than R1Soft, but design isn't everything. The biggest problem for us right now is the fact that R1Soft gets slower at taking backups.

 

[Infopro]

We've been advised by R1Soft to create new disk safes every few months, but that's simply not a viable solution.

Why not, I'm curious.

 

[DennisMidjord]

Maybe it's viable, but it isn't the best solution. When we create a new disk safe, users can no longer access backups before the date that we created the new disk safe. We've done this twice during the last 6 months, and we clearly see a spike in tickets from users that want a backup of some of their files.
Besides, it doesn't take long before R1Soft starts taking hours for a backup that shouldn't take long - this affects the performance of the webserver which means that we have to create disk safes more often - and if that's the case, then there's really not much logic in allowing our clients access to R1Soft

 

[Infopro]

Moving to an entirely different solution is better? Moving some of your larger accounts to another server or setting up excludes from backups might help speed up backup times.

 

[DennisMidjord]

Infopro, the problem isn't the backup speed - the problem is R1Soft somehow becoming slower and slower and slower until the point where one backup can't finish in 24 hours. Backup speed is totally fine the first couple of times, but it slows down during time when the disk safe gets "old". It's been reported by multiple people

 

[Infopro]

How large is the entire backup?

I don't use R1soft so no help with it other than thinking about reasons why backups take longer and longer to complete.

It's been reported by multiple people

Seems odd to me that they don't have a solution for this.

 

[DennisMidjord]

The backup is less than 60GB

Seems odd to me that they don't have a solution for this.

I was in touch with them regarding this, and they told me that they've rewritten the majority of the software and it's supposed to backup data at a higher rate - but this is months in the future

 

[adonius]

We had similar problem with slow lag due to long backups and it was related to MySQL and how large it can get when most users are packing wordpress sites now.

So that one file can become the whole backup routine in R1soft since on a shared server you have 1 instance of mysql and only privileges to it, so wordpress and mysql and R1 = slow server and long backups in our experience.

We're only now starting to look into WHM and their options about mysql and backup, there's 3 and ours is probably set to 1 big file, then there are many files and both.

It may just be that if we use the selection about many mysql it will allow multiple instances.

I only recently saw that was part of whm and I was under the impression you could only have 1 mysql running, but IF that is the way whm allows mysql to work now with multiple instances, then R1 won't choke on the 1 big mysql we've seen it choking on in our case.

So while exploring our own backup needs I saw your issue with R1 and imo that is the only real backup that works.

We had raid and when our HD started to corrupt the mysql the whole raid failed so baremetal restore took 2 days for the techs to give in and order new hw

Now our contracts say first sign of hd failure the noc must baremetal within X hours to keep our SLA's in order.

HW fails and raids can get corrupt so unless you have a redundant mirror you manually update to prevent corruption I don't see any way to keep anything up that long now.

Anyway, one big file usually mysql is the reason R1 chokes

If anyone knows about the multiple choices now in whm for mysql backup I read about, can you clarify that it is creating multiple instances of mysql on the server, if not, then what is it doing, chopping up mysql for bu purposes only?

 

[cPanelMichael]

If anyone knows about the multiple choices now in whm for mysql backup I read about, can you clarify that it is creating multiple instances of mysql on the server, if not, then what is it doing, chopping up mysql for bu purposes only?

Hello,

Here's a quote from the relevant section on the Backup Configuration document:

Per Account Only - Only back up the databases for each account. This setting uses the mysqldump utility.
Entire MySQL Directory - Back up all of the databases on the server. This backs up the entire /var/lib/mysql/ directory.
Per Account and Entire MySQL Directory - Perform a comprehensive backup that copies all of the databases for each individual account, as well as all of the databases on the server.

Regarding multiple instances of MySQL, could you elaborate a little more or provide a specific example of the behavior you are referring to?

Thanks!

 

[adonius]

They was I was reading the OP thread was within whm there was a selection for backup individual mysql whole mysql

So it looked to me as IF mysql was running more than 1 instance which I don't 'believe' is possible

So maybe the thread was discussing within whm the ability to allow a backup of 1 users mysql or maybe it was doing something I was told was not possible, to have more than 1 instance of mysql on a server running

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to allow backups for a shared server outside of our catastrophic R1 we do, which doesn't do mysql as 'users' only the server wide instance which means the whole db has to be restore is a corruption happens

So 'backup' is still part of what I have to figure out on a new server we have that is thus far just doing R1 for the whole server and the way it is setup now, I don't see any individual mysql info in whm but inside users cpanels I'm a little familiar with exporting mysqal for that account

Oh, we recently started to use backupguard on lots of wp users as a way to do partial mysql backup for that 1 account should they mess something up and need to restore a full data recover of just their data and mysql info

So I can't vouch yet for if backupguard works but thus far it is creating an archive of that users data

Soon we will take a new site with minor data and a theme and do some changes then try to 'restore' within backupguard to the original settings

If it works, then that will be our 'user level' backup
So backupguard with server wide R1 and then maybe a 2nd drive to mirror data and /var only might be our final solution
,
Backup has always been an issue with me, since I'm old school, 40+ years ago the first 3 words my dad taught me about computers were
backup
backup
backup

So I've always had redundant backup until the net and in the early days without wordpress it was easy, since html was created remotely and then ftp'd into the server so at least data was always remotely held

But wordpress changed that and then we relied on a raid and R1 and when a corrupt drive ruined a whole raid and only R1 saved us, I realized how vulnerable all these mysql intensive cms programs like wordpress are

Anyway, when I saw that whm info about a, b and c as mysql choices I thought hmmm, I don't see that on my whm and then I saw the thread was old and the refer link was dead so now I'm asking about exactly how is mysql options in whm done to allow a user ability to 'backup' other than the usual export in phpadmin stuff in cpanel most users should have access
Anyway, with mysql intensive users we are now installing backupguard as part of our management of their wp

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello @adonius,

I copied your post over to:

New Thread - WHM backup MySQL question

We'll leave the thread here for discussion of the R1Soft issue and any alternatives.

Thank you.