{"id":153,"date":"2025-07-30T12:43:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hostek.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2025-07-30T12:43:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:43:04","slug":"why-backups-replication-are-important-and-you-should-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/why-backups-replication-are-important-and-you-should-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Why backups &amp; replication are important and you should care"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Conversations about backups don\u2019t come up often. Planning for backups is normally discussed at the beginning of a project, and during disaster \u2013 not too much in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Something my Visual Basic teacher in college said, reminding me to save a project to floppy \u2013 as a backup. A few days after not taking his advice I lost my homework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why Backups Matter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Loss may come in many different forms, here\u2019s some of the likely reasons you can &amp; will lose data:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Deleted files<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Corrupted files<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Corrupted Operating System*<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Modified Files (such as being SQL injected)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>*Remember<\/strong> \u2013 If your shared, dedicated or virtual private server hosting has crashed, you may not have the opportunity to get direct access to the original disks to get files off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Replication Can Protect You Too (Advanced)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The only way to be sure a business can survive a hosting outage at their primary location, is have a second location. Most people believe this isn\u2019t necessary \u2013 but we believe it\u2019s good practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here\u2019s some of the most common, and best ways we see people replicating their data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">File Replication:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Keeping lots of files in sync takes a ton of CPU. The best overall method isn\u2019t real-time, but instead a script that just copies\/syncs everything periodically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Microsoft Server<\/strong> \u2013 For small sync or copy projects, a VPN and xcopy or robocopy seem to work most effectively. For those using Active Directory, DFS is an excellent choice for distributing files across multiple servers \u2013 you should have a hefty network connection if your files changed often.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Linux<\/strong> \u2013 similarly a VPN and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rsync\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">rsync<\/a> work great.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Database Replication:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>SQL Server<\/strong> \u2013 it\u2019s cost prohibitive for smaller businesses to utilize the Standard and Enterprise SQL products so we find it\u2019s most effective to utilize Log Shipping with SQL Web. There\u2019s some work involved in setting up, and making the failover server your primary, but for the protection it offers, it\u2019s worth it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>MongoDB &amp; MySQL<\/strong> \u2013 The easiest form of replication is Master \/ Slave. That means that the master will handle the reading and writing and pass off change to the slave. In some cases you can utilize the slave for read operations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We absolutely recommend replicating files and databases to another geographic location \u2013 for mission critical websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">VPS &amp; Web-hosting Backup Service<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some hosting providers do include backups as part of their <a href=\"https:\/\/hostek.com\/hosting\/shared\/best-web-hosting\">Shared Hosting<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/hostek.com\/hosting\/vps\/best-vps-hosting\">Virtual Private Server Hosting<\/a>. In my experience there\u2019s a few different common options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Shared\/cloud disk for backups (they provide storage, you backup what you want)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Snapshots (snapshot whole server, no file based restores)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Automated backups (full\/file based restores)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s likely to be dozens of variations to the above common options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At <a href=\"https:\/\/hostek.com\/\">Hostek<\/a> we believe backups are critical \u2013 so much so that we backup &amp; replicate almost everything. Every VPS and Shared Hosting account is backed up. We use R1Soft to manage backups because it provides:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Full server restores<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>File based restores (single file, single database tables etc)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Easy management<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But we don\u2019t stop there. All disks with the exception of special purpose disks are replicated to other hardware so we (and you) are protected from disk failures. And it means we can recover full server images, from snapshots in a hurry!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Your Protection Is Critical<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Please don\u2019t take backups lightly<\/strong>. In addition to your backups that your hosting provides, keep your files <strong>backed up locally<\/strong>, on your computer at your company. If you ever need them, you\u2019ll confidently have them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>If you need help planning a strategic backup solution<\/strong> \u2013 in conjunction with a single or multiple hosting accounts or servers we\u2019re here to help. Setup a zero hassle consultation for VPS accounts, or <a href=\"https:\/\/help.hostek.com\/en\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">contact our sales team<\/a> for more information on Shared Hosting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conversations about backups don\u2019t come up often. Planning for backups is normally discussed at the beginning of a project, and during disaster \u2013 not too much&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cloud-hosting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hassantest-com.server-hassanzahoor-com.vps.ezhostingserver.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}