Backup Plan

[HostDiscussion]

As a reseller it is critical to protect your customers data in the event of hardware failure or a corrupted Operating System.

What are some cost effective backup methods that resellers should consider implementing?

[Lawer]

Are you talking about RAID?

[FindMyHost]

RAID is a great solution to implement if you are in the planning stages of setting up your own dedicated server. Servers already in production may not be able to take advantage of this option unless they perform an OS Reload.

As a reseller you may not be able to change the infrastructure that is provided by your main host, however you can initiate FTP backups to protect your customers data. Check with your current host and see if they offer this solution or go with a totally different datacenter for further piece of mind.

[kollins77]

What kind of RAID is the best?

[dada]

Well, first of all RAID is used to minimize the HDD failure and not for the backup in the meaning it's mostly used here on the forum. If the files were accidentally removed from the HDD, RAID solution won't help, you will need backup copy on the separate disk.
hqhost.net offers the combination of RAID+backup solution.

[kasta]

Ahosting.biz offers Raid Disk Mirroring.
RAID is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks and used to mirror data on two disk drives simultaneously to ensure data integrity. Disk mirroring protects from loss of data by instantly switching to the other disk with no interruption in service if one of the disk drives fail without requiring data restoration from a backup.
RAID also provides twice the read rate of a single disk to increase performance. When multiple requests are made for the same data, demand can be distributed between two disks therefore decreasing response time for data access.
I think it's very convenient to use a dedi with this included feature.

[kollins77]

Is it important to have RAID?

[Dop]

I think that it is expensive. Maybe third party backup solutions can work?

[dada]

The prices do vary, I agree, but you can't get this solution for free, the host I mentioned hqhost.net reachea some sort of compromise between prices and quality, we used them before. Not sure, they might have upped their prices by now.

[intelliracks]

Is it important to have RAID?

It's very important to have RAID and the right RAID setup for your environment. For a webserver, you will want some form of redundancy should a HD decide to go down. The last thing you want is for it to take the entire server down, then couple that with the time to install the new drive, reformat, and reload everything. If you had a RAID 1 configuration with hot-swap drives, then you simply remove the bad drive, slide the new one in, and let the RAID controller rebuild it.

And as dada points out, RAID is NOT a backup solution. You must keep some form of backup, which is off the server, to have a true backup solution.

[dada]

Well, is RAID always offered on dedicated plans? I've been browsing Hostgator.com and Serverpoint.com, and they say nothing about RAID, should I pay additionally for RAID solution or does it mean not every host offers it?

[inter-viewer]

I think different hosts use different backup systems, say it might be RAID or Vault backup system using Rsync protocol that enables disk-based data protection and disaster recovery for linux servers and workstations running Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. AYKsolutions.com offer vault backup solution on their dedicated plans.