Newbies? I am new to managing my own server . I dont have the funds presently available for the linode back up service. Is there a community recommended alternative to linodes back up alternative? I am going to try to use the pantheon / drupal stack......

Is there a community recommended solution that is the most popular?

I was going to give a helpful answer to this question, until I looked at the username. You really expect anyone to help after how much of a prick you were about paying? fuck off.

The Linode backup service starts at $5 for a 512MB linode, and $15/mth handles backups for a 1536. It seems like the Linode backup service would fit your budget.

15us per month is out of my budget....... Im using all available funds to buy a year. In the future I will try to buy the back up service. Now Im looking for other options if anyone knows.

As for the other guy... Sorry I dont subscribe to your theology.

I seriously hope this guy is not part of Linodes support team. Does this forums mods seriously allow personal attacks?

Well, you can set up a local file server and just rsync content down every night, that's probably the best free option.

I don't imagine they're all that keen on personal attacks, but they do seem to turn a blind eye towards the occasional troll-spanking.

_________________
/ Peter

He didn't attack you. He told you he wasn't going to help you.

And unless you see "Linode staff" under the username, the people you're talking to are just people.

You're signing up for unmanaged hosting. That means your primary means of support is the community. And his point was that you've done a fairly good job pissing quite a few of us off.

As for backups, if you can't afford to have something reliable set up, you probably shouldn't be running a production environment. What good is it if you pay a year in advance only to lose all your data when you have no backups?

Thak you for that. I will try to find out a way to automatically back up my database daily.

I hope I can find what the most common practice is for those who dont subscribe to the back up system.

Well if I ever see a job opening at visa Ill post it here to maybe get some karma



Yeah its my biggest fear. I have to learn how to do it. There is not much choice. Necessity never made a good bargain. Im all ears. I am completely new to managing my own server I hope I can figure it out. and fast.

If there is a turoial on this let me know Id like to give it a try untill I can figure out another way. Im sorry for the complete newbie questions. I will try to come up to speed asap.

This is something you would want to consider: http://library.linode.com/linux-tools/rdiff-backup/
Just don't forget to dump your databases before doing the nightly backup.

I havent got to it yet, but this looks helpfull
http://library.linode.com/SYKsaq

A lot of people use Amazon S3 for backups, but I suppose you don't want to use it because Amazon only takes credit cards.

If you want to roll your own solution, rsync and its family (rdiff-backup, rsnapshot, etc.) are definitely the best tools. You just need a Linux computer at home. (If you're stuck with Windows like the rest of the world, you can try dual-booting or VirtualBox.) Then it's just

rsync -avz username@12.34.56.78:/backup/from/here/ /backup/to/here/

Make sure you also include the MySQL database in the backup; Drupal is useless without the database. Use mysqldump to create a daily dump of the database, and backup the dump at the same time you backup the rest of your website.

S3 is expensive. Including Linode and S3 bandwidth, nightly rsyncs for a full 1536 hard disk with 1% daily churn and seven incrementals stored with a monthly full copy will cost $20.28 per month. Restoring from backup will cost $13 each time.

These are probably worst-case costs, but my overall point is that S3 is expensive, and it's not really a better alternative than the Linode backup service unless you're doing something fancier than just simple backups.

Yes, it is

But not everybody who runs a Linode 1536 has 48GB of data, and the good thing about S3 is that your fees are proportional to the amount of data you need to store/retrieve. If you only have a few hundred MB of data, S3 is cheap. If you have a few hundred GB, on the other hand, there are much better options. (Of course, if you're worried about a datacenter being hit by an earthquake, you'd need something like S3.)

Other solutions: BQBackup, rsync.net, Tarsnap, etc. But I don't think any of them would be a good fit for the OP, because he can't (and/or doesn't want to) use a credit card or PayPal. So unless he's planning to host something anti-Chinese, his best bet would be to use his home computer as a backup machine.