What backup approach for uploaded files stored in file system?

Rails
1

Hi,

I’m wondering what backup/recovery approach do people use/recommend
when they have an application that has not only a database (mysql in
my case), but uploaded files that are stored in a file system (using
paperclip in my case)?

Also part of the question I guess is how much one should trust the
hosting provider re how it does or doesn’t make backups of filesystem/
database, and if you had to how quickly they would be able to do a
restore for you.

Note I’m on http://dreamhost.com/ at the moment by the way, on shared
hosting.

Thanks

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2

PS - Checked with dreamhost & they do make filesystem (domain)
backups, but they quite clearly say they do not guarentee things here,
and recommended/offer an approach for you to do a complete domain
download every 30 days. The only issue here then is the amount of
downloading you’d have to do…which would then make one wonder
whether it might be more cost effective storing the uploaded files
directly on something like S3 to start with perhaps? any comments

On Jan 2, 8:33 am, greghauptmann [email protected] wrote:

restore for you.

Note I’m onhttp://dreamhost.com/at the moment by the way, on shared
hosting.

Thanks

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3

My advice would be to either setup a script to download the files (and
a dump of your database!) to your local machine/server or automate the
process and dump it on S3. Or both.

If your ISP has a problem, you are one of thousands (or tens of
thousands) of clients. In other words, you’re not important – or
just as important as everyone else.

The relevant questions when talking about backups are…

  • Can we afford to lose the data?
  • How long can we afford to not have the site up and available?

The more critical the site/data the more important backups – and a
(tested) restore plan is.

Good luck!

-philip

On Jan 1, 2010, at 3:22 PM, greghauptmann wrote:

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4

I have a set of Capistrano recipes that dumps the database and shared
assets to another server/machine for each application. You can
download them from:

http://github.com/firsthand/application-backup

What I like about this approach is that all the backup configuration
is centralized along with the archives themselves.Need to backup a new
application, just add another config.

There are some other alternatives here as well:

HTH,
Nicholas

Nicholas H.
Ruby on Rails Developer
[email protected]

Firsthand Web Design and Development

Website

Twitter
http://twitter.com/firsthand

Blog

On Jan 1, 5:33 pm, greghauptmann [email protected] wrote:

restore for you.

Note I’m onhttp://dreamhost.com/at the moment by the way, on shared
hosting.

Thanks

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5

greghauptmann wrote:

Hi,

I’m wondering what backup/recovery approach do people use/recommend
when they have an application that has not only a database (mysql in
my case), but uploaded files that are stored in a file system (using
paperclip in my case)?

Hi,

So what did you end up using? Incremental backups?

6

On 07 Jul 2010, at 17:42, Fernando P. wrote:

I’m wondering what backup/recovery approach do people use/recommend
when they have an application that has not only a database (mysql in
my case), but uploaded files that are stored in a file system (using
paperclip in my case)?

Hi,

So what did you end up using? Incremental backups?

We use rsync to synchronize folders between two servers, it’s always
possible to do some kind of archiving or revision management on the
remote server (which is what we do too).

Best regards

Peter De Berdt