Thread

And, you know, a web host created backup, done through the MySQL command line tool is far faster, less memory intensive, and more reliable than anything done through PHP.  Why hosts do not provide this service and backups on a nightly basis is beyond me.  If your host does not do this already, demand it.  Nothing is more precious than your site data.

EngineHosting does this, correct? If so, I can sleep a little better at night. 😉

I’m always forgetting to back up now with the built in tool, I’ll never remember with having to log into phpMyAdmin to do it. 😊

I’m going to check out MySQLDumper though.

MySQLDumper is very very good and I am pretty sure you can even set it up to do automatic backups. 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

Ah, automatic backups would be definitely for me! Thanks Mark

As a side note, really phpMyAdmin can suffer the same memory related issues when dumping large databases/tables as it still relies on php to handle pulling the SQL data from MySQL and spitting it back out.  I have seen phpMyAdmin dumps created in user accounts for hosting places that limit php to the default 8 or 16megs of ram usage and the same silent “error” actually its not silent its hidden.  The php out of memory error gets appended to the end of the .sql dump file you get out of phpMyAdmin.  It indeed can happen as well even on our own phpMyAdmin installations we provide clients as those systems currently have a 128meg php memory usage limit phpMyAdmin is working in, though we are looking to increase that to assist in extremely large database cases as well.

To answer your question though, EngineHosting does 30 days of nightly backups of our database servers currently.  There is working being done with our backup application provider to implement incremental backups ever 6 hours intra-day for each of those 30 days as well.  We will have more details about that once its fully tested for reliability and system impact awareness testing are both completed.  If you have further questions about this, drop our .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) a note and we can fill you in.

To answer your question though, EngineHosting does 30 days of nightly backups of our database servers currently.  There is working being done with our backup application provider to implement incremental backups ever 6 hours intra-day for each of those 30 days as well.  We will have more details about that once its fully tested for reliability and system impact awareness testing are both completed.  If you have further questions about this, drop our .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) a note and we can fill you in.

Thanks Nevin, I appreciate you taking the time to answer. 😊 I’ll email with anymore questions.

MySQLDumper is very very good and I am pretty sure you can even set it up to do automatic backups. 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark,

I meant to ask earlier. Do you know of another piece of software that will backup server files as well? Or do you typically do those manually?

“and the same silent “error” actually its not silent its hidden.”

There are actually two silent errors.  One, when the error is appended.  And two, when the server has display_errors set to Off and no error is outputted at all, anywhere.

I meant to ask earlier. Do you know of another piece of software that will backup server files as well? Or do you typically do those manually?

Most of the good, commercial FTP/SFTP clients have file sync/backup functions.  On Windows both WSFTP Pro and CuteFTP Professional can, and Transmit on MacOS X has this function as well.  In most cases you only do a full download once, then the applications connect in and only transfer the files that have changed on the remote server since your last syncing of your local copy to the remote copy.

“and the same silent “error” actually its not silent its hidden.”

There are actually two silent errors.  One, when the error is appended.  And two, when the server has display_errors set to Off and no error is outputted at all, anywhere.

True, forgot about the idea of the display_errors in php being off and not providing the error even in the dump.  In either case you would not know until you went to recover the sql file and found that it was incomplete at best.

Thanks, Paul!

Ah, I didn’t realize that. I have WSFTP, but I prefer to use FileZilla. I’ve have to check and see if FileZilla will do this. If not, might have to switch back to WSFTP.

Thanks

I think PHP4 gets only 8MB of RAM by default, whereas PHP5 gets 128MB. So the “out of memory” problem is likely to be
gone in PHP5. It would be feasible to create a backup utility that checks the version of PHP, and only displays itself
on the menu if the version is PHP5.

Another of the problems is that local backups on the server should not be stored in the web-viewable directory tree, because
it’s conceivable that if the backup file name were widely known or easily guessable then a third party could download it and
get the administrator password, etc.
So a plug-in that saves backups (that include EE user & password info. tables) in the web-viewable directory tree is
not a sensible option.

EE users need to know to ask their hosting company to set up a cron job to back up their database at regular intervals (and
also, ideally, compress it as a ZIP file—or even a passworded ZIP file), and the user needs to also find out how to
download the database backup (which should not be stored in the web-viewable directory tree).

EE users also need to be educated about database CHARSET issues.

I think PHP4 gets only 8MB of RAM by default, whereas PHP5 gets 128MB. So the “out of memory” problem is likely to be
gone in PHP5.

PHP4 will be a contender in the market for many years to come. Have you looked at current PHP5 adaption figures? Either way, budget hosts will continue to limit the amount of PHP the user can access. Really, 16 MB should be enough for anybody, don’t you agree?

It would be feasible to create a backup utility that checks the version of PHP, and only displays itself on the menu if the version is PHP5.

I am not sure this would be the best approach, but it certainly would be possible to rwerite the backup utility—or perhaps use an external module, or something.

Another of the problems is that local backups on the server should not be stored in the web-viewable directory tree, because it’s conceivable that if the backup file name were widely known or easily guessable then a third party could download it and
get the administrator password, etc.

No passwords are stored in the database in plain text. Even so, obviously we would want to store them in some non-publicly acessible part of the filesystem, yes.

Let’s take a quick look at the bigger picture here: reliability must lie at the heart of every backup strategy. Would you rather have convenient backups that fail silently in, say, 2% of the cases, or need to go slightly out of your way to create reliable backups? Well, I know my answer to that one. To sum it all up: I don’t know what EE development will bring in that area (not sure it’s been decided yet, actually—probably not), but there are lots of options to backup your data. You should use them.

EE users need to know to ask their hosting company to set up a cron job to back up their database at regular intervals

It depends. Good hosts will simply backup their clients databases regularly themselves.

EE users also need to be educated about database CHARSET issues.

With the universal advent of utf-8, we’re slowly fading them out.

Good hosts will simply backup their clients databases regularly themselves.

Maybe the documentation should warn users to confirm this before choosing a hosting company.

                    * * * * *

EE users also need to be educated about database CHARSET issues.

With the universal advent of utf-8, we’re slowly fading them out.

In my experience with Japanese, when porting data between different versions of MySQL and/or between LINUX and Windows,
the database CHARSET has to be explicitly set when creating the database and/or when PHP connects to the database.

So the user should make a note of the CHARSET before porting the data
(this information should be embedded in a phpMyAdmin backup if the user has any control over CHARSET).

However some hosting companies offer only a single database, or a fixed number of databases, and they also set the CHARSET
when they create the database(s). The user cannot change the CHARSET. Older versions of MySQL defaulted to latin1, and
newer versions default to utf-8. Only in the latest versions of MySQL can the user set different CHARSETs on a table-by-table basis.

It depends. Good hosts will simply backup their clients databases regularly themselves.

Ingmar, with all due respect, but backup is one side of the coin, restore the other one. Have you ever tried to get a backup or restore from a provider doing thus backups for their clients if you messed with EE and it was not their fault that problems occurred?

Eventually, you’ll get nothing (I’ve never had access to the backup files myself in thus a case) - or a complete restore for all apps installed will be performed automatically. With a backup you even don’t know how old. Great if you have more than EE running on that account.

It really has to be a *very* good provider if he’ll figure out for you what to restore and what not to restore or if he gives you access to the backup data to select what you need to be restored.

Ingmar, with all due respect, but backup is one side of the coin, restore the other one.

Markus, I am well aware of that. And I am not saying that client-side backups don’t have their place, of course they do. Obviously, I perform regular backups myself.

Have you ever tried to get a backup or restore from a provider doing thus backups for their clients if you messed with EE and it was not their fault that problems occurred?

Yes, in a few cases (although it was not my fault that there was no local backup—I was always brought in after the fact). We just had such a support case the other day, actually. Some hosts won’t do it at all, others will charge you a fee (Godaddy wants 150$, go figure), still others will simply do as you ask them and restore your latest backup (EngineHosting being among them, just for the record).

The ultimate responsibility for your data lies with you, of course. Choosing the right host can help, but you still should do backups; my point is this: you shouldn’t have to rely on EE to do so, there are many other (and as we’ve seen: more reliable) ways to achieve that and keep your data safe.

It really has to be a *very* good provider if he’ll figure out for you what to restore and what not to restore or if he gives you access to the backup data to select what you need to be restored.

I let Nevin answer that one, if he’s so inclined.

I don’t doubt: EngineHosting is a very good host!

😉