I need to understand some of the best practices to effectively backup the domains hosted in my cPanel server and restore it in the even of disaster. Can you share some of your experiences into effectively doing the same?
Basically you can never have too many backups. To minimise data loss in the event of it all going badly wrong you want them as frequently as possible and ensure that they are secure. We take both regular cPanel backups of accounts (which are stored in multiple locations including locally within our network and also backed up offsite) as well as using CDP for further protection with hourly backups. It's not unknown for backups not to work sometimes for whatever reason (not specifically to cPanel - this can happen on any platform) and so the more options you have the better.
We've found that running daily cpanel backups on our servers
- takes too long
- causes very high loads/iowait
so what we do is:
1. cpanel backups (with the --skiphomedir option) every Sunday morning
2. rsync /home to remote server every night
3. automysqlbackups of all databases once a day
1 and 3 are rsynced to remote storage once they've completed.
This way we can easily restore any account (or all accounts in case of a disaster) very easily.
- takes too long
- causes very high loads/iowait
so what we do is:
1. cpanel backups (with the --skiphomedir option) every Sunday morning
2. rsync /home to remote server every night
3. automysqlbackups of all databases once a day
1 and 3 are rsynced to remote storage once they've completed.
This way we can easily restore any account (or all accounts in case of a disaster) very easily.
Texo, where are you backing up to - to the same drive as the OS/cPanel, an additional hard disk or offsite FTP? What's your load average normally. Whilst the load does increase for backups, generally unless your server is pretty highly loaded normally it shouldn't cause a problem.
We rsync/scp everything to a rsync.net account in Switzerland (our hosting servers are in the UK).
Sorry - I should have been clearer and was referring to when you're experiencing high loads with the cPanel backups. Just trying to determine if the load is related to the method of backing up.
Have any one tried offering domain backup and recovery as a value add service for your customers that you can charge? or doing backups to protect the data you host in your servers?
Regarding the load, what is the average number of domains hosted and backed up per cPanel server?