backup solutions

[ejdbroker]

What are people using to backup their plesk boxes? I tried the plesk utility, which worked fine, except the sites come down for the duration, which in my case was a few hours....very unacceptable as you can imagine. Is there a better solution?

 

[jwdick]

A lot of admins use 4PSA's backup solution. Check it out here:
http://www.4psa.com/products/4psatbackup.php

I haven't used it myself, but it gets high reviews from users of this site.

 

[ejdbroker]

That looks great, no mention of whether the sites come down during the process....plus its pricey....there must be a "free" solution someone uses?

 

[dahamsta]

Surely the sites come down individually, for the duration of the backup of that particular site? It's not ideal, in fact it's damned annoying, but it's not for the duration of the entire backup afaik. Not on my server anyway.

adam

 

[jwdick]

You can also use psadump with the --nostop-domain option to backup without taking down the sites.

 

[ejdbroker]

Ok, well if the sites have to come down, thats fine, i can accept that. My problem was the amount of time it took for each site. I can understand that a site with a couple 100 megs of data might take a few minutes, but 4+ hours?! no way. What are other's experience with the time a back up takes? It could have been the fact i was then ftp'ing the back up elsewhere of course, but a smart backup design would take the sight down, backup, then bring the site back live and do the ftp in the background.

 

[thehostmanager]

What I usually do is make a zip/tar/gz of the vhosts folder as well as the mysql folder. While this doesn't backup the configuration in Plesk, it is a foolproof way to get a backup of all your files and databases in case there ever is a problem.

Regards,
Jeff Wickenheiser