ALWAYS Save a Site Backup To Your Computer!

Elizabeth said:
I'd be esp concerned since he is located in Boston, and his datacenter is in Chicago, and there seems to be only two of them on staff, him and one other guy. http://www.tugoso.com/ the staff page.
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I'd like to know the significance of this finding. Specifically, what part of a datacenter being miles away (yet within the same country) of the business/individual who owns the servers raises concerns? I'm sure most "resellers" (or, more correct in this case, co-locators) are not even within the same state of their machines. And even if they are, that changes absolutely nothing when it comes to dealing with a situation such as the one in question. The very reason the servers are co-located is so that qualified technicians can take care of them. They can and have done so much more than we could ever do ourselves. If you know of a reason why this would raise a red flag that I'm not aware of, please, honestly, share it with me.

Brogan said:
Replacing servers due to a DDoS attack?
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Brogan said:
Something doesn't add up here...
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What doesn't add up here? Are you assuming technology can never fail? While we're still not sure what exactly happened, we can confirm that an account on our server was DDoSed prior to the hardware failure, and from what we know so far, this caused a great amount of stress on the server (no small task considering the specs on this specific machine), which if you are not aware of, were manufactured by imperfect human beings. Just as a brand new video card or motherboard from NewEgg can be DOA (dead-on-arrival) or suffer from a short lifespan, server hardware are prone to the same shortcomings of any other piece of technology created.
Blandt said:
I think they burned the house down .. that's the only way to wipe a whole rack of hard drives... you guys be patient .. and look for a new home .. a little more but you will have peace of mind
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I'd like to point out that what has happened here, can happen with any host. I'd completely understand if the victims involved decided to host their data elsewhere, and do sympathize with the loss of data, as I've had this happen to me with both a PC and web server. But let's point out a few things to consider:

First off, as I briefly mentioned above, this can happen almost anywhere. Thankfully it's a rare occurrence, but when it happens, it most definitely becomes a huge issue, and emotions do rise, especially when data has been lost. Which leads me to point number two.

It is almost always YOUR responsibility to fully back-up your data to a safe location on a regular basis, and yours alone! Read your ToS or contract, the ultimate word on your host's obligations (or lack thereof). Especially if you deal with shared hosting environments (HostGator and 1&1, for example), they cannot be bothered to look after each and every account's data, for technical AND legal reasons. You can have the best hosting provider in the entire world, but if you don't take proper steps to safeguard a copy of your site's data both online AND off-line, then you still get sent back to square one.


I'd like to believe that out of the entire year that we've provided hosting, this one (admittedly large) situation completely beyond our control would not hide the fact that we have done everything possible to offer a quality service to our clients, above and beyond that which you can find in a shared hosting environment. We are working hard with the datacenter to resolve this issue. We (Chris and I) both put our health and what little free time we have on the line to do everything we can for our clients. The least we can ask is for everyone, including those reading this thread, to try and fully understand what happened, and who is (or isn't) at fault.
 
Sorry to hear about it even reseller hosts do have backup's i remember samething happened to me last year but bluehost had couples of weeks old backup.
 
Peggy said:
This is the email I received yesterday -

[...]In an effort to remedy the situation, all incoming connections to each server were blocked and the hardware affected was swapped and replaced with new equipment.[...]
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Wow.

I've been working in the web hosting business for 15 years, and the explanation you've been given is pure B.S. The host is either lying or really, really stupid. Back in 2006, the host I work for was on the receiving end of the biggest DDoS anyone at our upstream providers (two of the world's largest) had ever seen, and we lost no customer data.

Unfortunately, even if your host was honest about the cause of the data loss, that doesn't help you in a situation like this. You can piece together your site through caches and archives, but hopefully everyone reading this will think twice about their hosts. This is really a subject for a different thread, but it just kills me to see people trusting their hard work to incompetents and jerkoffs, and that's what 99% of the "hosts" out there are. This kind of amateur hour stuff really pisses me off, and I'm sorry that some of you had to suffer because of those fools.
 
Wow that scares me because my host has been around for 8 years (fatcow) and I thought such a big hosting company is probably safe and scure from attacks but reading your thread scared me, guess I will make backups regularly now. Sorry to hear I know exactly how it feels. A blog is nothing, you got your most important thing with you, your son :)
 
Peggy said:
I didn't, and I have lost my entire site. :(

My site has been down for 72 + hours now. Found out yesterday morning that a DDoS attack on my hosts servers crashed and burned them. Everything was lost.

When they tried to restore backups, they found that they were all corrupted. Yes I took weekly backups. And stored them on my server, rather than my computer. Stupid, I know.

This is a 2 yr old blog of my life with my son who has Aspergers as well as other unique abilities. I chronicled his achievements, disappointments, special moments, as well as my feelings, thoughts, and opinions on many other things - God, religion, politics, the weather, mohawks, etc.

2 years of heart and soul on my blog - lost - although I have found a few things through Google cache, thank God.

Don't be stupid like me.
Save your backups to your computer.
You'll be glad you did.

:(
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Sorry to hear that. Don't forget to check the archive.org's way back machine, it might have some archived pages as well.
 
Well, no matter whose fault any of it is (or isn't), I'm still responsible for making my own backups - which I did, but stored them in the wrong place.

My whole point in posting this at all is to not only remind people to make regular backups of your site, but to store the backups in a secure place, IE your computer, a cd/dvd, etc. NOT on your server like I did. That was no one's fault but mine. :(
 
David Thomas said:
I'd like to know the significance of this finding. Specifically, what part of a datacenter being miles away (yet within the same country) of the business/individual who owns the servers raises concerns? I'm sure most "resellers" (or, more correct in this case, co-locators) are not even within the same state of their machines. And even if they are, that changes absolutely nothing when it comes to dealing with a situation such as the one in question. The very reason the servers are co-located is so that qualified technicians can take care of them. They can and have done so much more than we could ever do ourselves. If you know of a reason why this would raise a red flag that I'm not aware of, please, honestly, share it with me.
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If I am going to pay for hosting, I would want the company to be located so that the datacenter is their own responsibility. That's also why I have never knowingly gone with a reseller.
 
I used to run a script on my server that would have the server FTP into my home computer and upload the backup files (gzipped). However I changed configurations and never bothered to change the details to get it to work again.

I just looked and my last backup downloaded to my PC is from 2 years ago. Time flies. Get a backup plan!
 
feldon30 said:
I used to run a script on my server that would have the server FTP into my home computer and upload the backup files (gzipped). However I changed configurations and never bothered to change the details to get it to work again.

I just looked and my last backup downloaded to my PC is from 2 years ago. Time flies. Get a backup plan!
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I've been looking for this. I can't find anything that will automatically download to my home [Mac] computer.
I use cron jobs to backup my databases to my web server and then occasionally backup my entire website to include those backups.
Backing up databases slow things down. I think the solution might be to find another host just for backups.

My host lives in IL and the datacenter is in TX. If he feels the best datacenter for him is in TX, I don't really expect him to pickup and move his family there.
 
Is there a way to generate a full backup and have it sent to yourself? I want to try and automate the process if possible.

If not, what is the easiest way to do this?
 
ArnyVee said:
If not, what is the easiest way to do this?
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I do it good old way. Using FileZilla FTP, I drag public_html folder to my desktop. In PhpMyAdmin, I use export function to download gzipped DB. I do both once a week. It doesn't take more than 1 min to start them.
 
ArnyVee said:
Is there a way to generate a full backup and have it sent to yourself? I want to try and automate the process if possible.

If not, what is the easiest way to do this?
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Yes there is ... BUT if your site is small ... say 1 GB you are not going to download that every day .. are you ?
whatever they told you about backing up your site on your local computer must be kidding you. I'm not even talking about a medium site of 5 gigs ...

Let's be real ... reputable hosts backup your data OFF SITE .. somewhere else .. it is your responsibility BUT THEY PROVIDE the means for a reasonable backup method and i'm sure as hell that doesn't cost much .. (Ask any Rackspace or linode customer ... we're talking small change of less than 5 dollars a month for a full hard drive image)

bottom line : find a host that provide backup .... downloading to your local computer isn't and shouldn't be the way
 
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