Contingency Plan

[Jase]

I would like to hear details on Hostnine's contingency plans in case of a major catastrophe.

In the worst case scenario, hard disk failure could result in data loss.

So what would happen in a case such as this?

[kingaman]

i believe daily backups are made daily, so any data loss should be limited to the previous day.
you should however make sure you (or your clients) keep a local copy of the site just incase

[idwebca]

I assume your answer should be under Terms & Conditions
http://www.hostnine.com/terms-and-conditions/

Perhaps under disclaimer.. not sure.. but feel free to peek

[dr2web]

I too believe that H9 does daily backups, but as a reseller you should make it a practice to go in to your clients consoles and do a backup at least once a week or so. Depending on how many clients you have, then at least you have locally an immediate fix, even if it is a week old.

I keep locally all files to setup all of my clients with a new host. If H9 were to go down, all I would have do is switch hosts, upload files, and change the IP for my nameservers. My clients would be up again in a matter of minutes without having to rely on any outside source.

Jase, you should consider doing something along the same lines regardless of what H9 or any other provider does (or says that they do).

Hiya,

Backups are done to an off-site location for all servers and nodes, these servers are in an undisclosed location that is NOT one of the RC node locations.

[Jase]

Originally Posted by H9Joshua

Hiya,

Backups are done to an off-site location for all servers and nodes, these servers are in an undisclosed location that is NOT one of the RC node locations.

This is the absolute highest level of redundancy that could be expected.

That would protect us even if an entire data center was wiped out by a natural disaster such as fire.

A lower level of data redundancy would be to just have an extra hard disk in each server which replicates all data each day as a backup in case of hard disk failure. This would allow data to be recovered in the case of hard disk failure, but not in the case of a major natural disasters which has to be extremely rare. We can expect a hard disk to fail every now and then, but how many major data centers have ever been completely wiped out?

I don't think it would be practical for most resellers to do their own daily backups. But no host could ever be expected to do more then what H9 is already doing.

[kingaman]

Originally Posted by Jase

A lower level of data redundancy would be to just have an extra hard disk in each server which replicates all data each day as a backup in case of hard disk failure.

it would probably be just as easy to set up a RAID 0 array so that backups don't even have to be reinstalled after a failure. however given my knowledge of the current backup system and the support provided by the data centers this would likely serve little benefit to H9.

Originally Posted by Jase

I don't think it would be practical for most resellers to do their own daily backups.

it really depends on how many clients you have, but any form of manual system wouldn't be terribly efficient. i personally don't take backups for my clients, i figure that the complexity of the H9 system means that any issue should be resolved before I can do anything about it.
i do however provide extra backup options for some users - generally if they have a database that is constantly being updated. i also take a backup before i cancel any account.

[dst]

Is it possible to back up reseller accounts either one sub account or all accounts via the reseller central?

[Ace]

Originally Posted by H9Joshua

Hiya,

Backups are done to an off-site location for all servers and nodes, these servers are in an undisclosed location that is NOT one of the RC node locations.

Awesome, thanks.

[BerettaX]

We back up all our clients sites before we upload them and keep them archived. We also use MySql tools

MySQL :: MySQL GUI Tools Downloads

to create local daily backups of clients DB's. One thing you should never do is rely on your host to backup your clients data. They are YOUR clients after all. Not to say H9 or other hosts couldnt do it , its just to cover yourself in case anything happens. With plesk you can also create daily backups automatically. So we usually have a local backup , daily mysql backup , and a backup using cpanel or plesk. Just automate it , set it and forget it

There are also plenty of backup tools available online as well. We also archive old clients on DVD's

When I started out I learned the hard way that I should of kept my own backups. Now I have at a minimum 3 copies of projects! Great thread!