neville Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 Hi all. I've been following with keen interest the progress on fixing the hard disk failure on server 107 today as that's the one with all my stuff on it! Glad to see things seem to be up and running again, and I'm impressed both with the speedy fixing as well as with your timely communication in the forum on the progress. I do have a big concern, though, and that's to do with the backup you restored. I'm running two blogs on my site. Both experimental so not business-critical or anything like that. I did quite a bit of work on both during yesterday Sunday. None of that work is reflected in either blog. It's as if nothing changed at all. So I assume the backup doesn't include anything from over 24 hours ago. Frankly, that's pretty alarming. I'm doing my own weekly backup, but it looks like I should be doing it more frequently than that. Can you tell me what is your backup procedure? If there's a page on the site somewhere that expalins it, please tell me where. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmanmcp Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 So I assume the backup doesn't include anything from over 24 hours ago. Frankly, that's pretty alarming. I'm doing my own weekly backup, but it looks like I should be doing it more frequently than that. Bottom line is you are responsible for your own data. Now 24 hours is actually pretty good recovery of data, in some sites I heard of lot longer periods of lost data. The actual backup process is a resource hog and slows the system down when its running. Running an incremental or full backup more frequently would tie up a server and no one would be able to view their pages. If you make a change and you don't want to lose it, its safer to back it up yourself. Hopefully someone will come along and give you the correct timeframes for the backups, I don't know them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neville Posted October 31, 2005 Author Share Posted October 31, 2005 Bottom line is you are responsible for your own data. No doubt. Part of the reason for asking what the procedure here is. For instance, if it says backups are done every 24 hours then that would influence how frequently I do my own. Of course, anything I regard as really crirical, I keep another copy someplace else no matter how frequent a server backup might be. I was in an email chat just now with Abdul at TCH Tech Support (I'd filed a help ticket this morning as soon as I was aware of the server problem) who said "The restore process is underway, accounts starting with A-F are done. Please give us some more time to restore all the accounts." My account starts with C and I can now access sites, CPanel, etc. But I was wondering about Abdul's comment - does this mean that further restoring on my account is going on? Could I interpret those comments to mean that maybe all my stuff will re-appear again? Or is that just wishful thinking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 Bob covered it pretty well. There is no way we can have a backup run everytime someone makes a file change. I believe that backups are run every evening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 Please open a ticket with the help desk, they may be able to retrieve something from the failed drive if they can get it to function. Aside from that, your data is your responsibility as Bob mentions. When ever I make any changes to my sites I always backup before starting and then once again when I have the changes I want them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 I would hold off on that help desk ticket until that server is completely restored. The techs have their hands full restoring the rest of the accounts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 I believe the full backups are restored first to recreate accounts and then the incremental backups are restored. Which accounts for the flip flopping of our files from old to the newer ones at the end of the restore. And why the techs always say wait until they give the word that the restore is finished before you make changes to your site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madmanmcp Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 My account starts with C and I can now access sites, CPanel, etc. But I was wondering about Abdul's comment - does this mean that further restoring on my account is going on? Could I interpret those comments to mean that maybe all my stuff will re-appear again? I'm not exactly sure since I am not the one doing the restore From what I know data centers do a combination of "full" and "incremental" backups to get the best results of backed up data. When a "restore" is done they usually run the last "full" run and then restore the incremental runs to restore everything to its most current state. Maybe you looked after the full restore and the incremental has not been run yet...but PLEASE don't hold me to this statement Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TweezerMan Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 I'm running two blogs on my site. Both experimental so not business-critical or anything like that. I did quite a bit of work on both during yesterday Sunday. None of that work is reflected in either blog. It's as if nothing changed at all. So I assume the backup doesn't include anything from over 24 hours ago. Frankly, that's pretty alarming. I'm doing my own weekly backup, but it looks like I should be doing it more frequently than that. Can you tell me what is your backup procedure? If there's a page on the site somewhere that expalins it, please tell me where. Thanks. Bill (Head Guru) posted this info about server backups some months ago: We perform weekly backups via a local backup disk drive. This is done on Friday nights. Then we do every other night off site backups to our remote off-site backup servers. I believe CPanel also makes a home directory backup nightly, which is what you download by clicking on the "Download a home directory Backup" link in the Backup section of your CPanel. (Note that this is not a "full" backup, in that it does not include any MySQL databases you may have, e-mail aliases, or e-mail filters.) All of these backups are run overnight and take hours to complete. At the time s107 was taken down due to the bad hard disk, *if* a backup was running, it probably would not have been completed and thus could not be relied upon to restore accounts to the new disk drive. Since all types of backups are run overnight, the latest backup that could have been reasonably expected to be available would have been one made the night before (Saturday night). Since the changes you made to your web site were done after that backup was made, those changes would be lost when that backup was restored. This should not be "alarming" - there is no way a server backup could contain changes you made to your site on the same day the server failed. As has been previously mentioned, backing up your data is ultimately your responsibility. If you have critical data on the server you need to be preserved, or need more frequent backups than what TCH provides, you should make and download your own backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neville Posted October 31, 2005 Author Share Posted October 31, 2005 Thanks, everyone, I appreciate your comments. I do understand the points you've all quite clearly and strongly made re responsibility for backups. I have no problem with that especially as it's now clear to me what the process is and responsibilities are here at TCH. Re today's problems with server 107, I now cannot access any site. What's more, when I log in to CPanel it tells me I have no SQL databases installed when I in fact have (had) three. However, I'm assuming that this is due to the fact that the restore is still going on, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 That´s correct Neville. If you still have problems with databases etc after the restore is finished please submit a ticket and the techs will check it for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neville Posted October 31, 2005 Author Share Posted October 31, 2005 Thanks Thomas, appreciate your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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