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rubb3rfunk
03-13-2012, 05:57 PM
Hi my company has a website running on asp.net and currenty hosted with use of a cloud server plan. As it has a huge amount of traffics and members, thinking of having a mirroring (syncing?) backup on a different hosting provider in a different location. So that in case this current main server goes down, we only need to point to the mirroring backup. We also have another website running on php and hosted by VPS, and need the same backup plan.

Could someone can advise;

How can I make this plan possible? Any additional softwares needed?

Do I need to mirror whole server? (or just directory+database?)

For the mirroring server, do I better also need to choose the cloud server plan? or just VPS works?

Or if this is not the way we need to take, what is the better solution? If you can suggest me the industrial standard backup procedures, it will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

MyITGuy
03-13-2012, 09:24 PM
It's definitely a good idea for you to evaluate and test your backup strategies, and I just have the following questions/comments:

First - What amount of downtime would be acceptable for you? I.E. Do you need something that will be seamless, but comes with a higher price tag...or would you mind doing some DNS Changes/restoring backups (I.E. The syncing process you mention) which means your site/emails could be offline for up to 24 hours, but comes with a smaller price tag?

Second - You mention that your side is written in asp.net, so my question is are any of your pages database driven or do you collect a significant amount of data that is stored in a database throughout the day?

Third - What service do you have in place for e-mail, and is this also something you would like to consider in your backup/contingency plan?

Once I see the responses to the questions above, I will respond try to respond with some specifics that will assist you.

rubb3rfunk
03-13-2012, 10:45 PM
Hi MyITGuy

Thanks for such a quick help.
Our sites are kinda comprehensive free membership sites with news, classifieds, directory, forum,,,so all the data for ASP.Net site are stored in MSSQL server (Windows server) and for php using MySql (Apache).
The basic idea for the mirroring is disaster recovery purpose. The hosting company currently we use does backup regularly and we also do backup on local manually. So we may accept small downtime at the moment, say server maintenance or power failure, as long as we don’t lose any data and files. But I am interested in what the difference in the price tags between seamless and up-to-24hrs offline.
Sorry but I cannot get your third point clearly. Possible to describe it more details?

And I know it’s matter of cost and time but do you think in industrial standard, even sites on VPS or cloud server, not dedicated server, should have this backup strategies?

Many thanks

MyITGuy
03-14-2012, 12:26 PM
Our sites are kinda comprehensive free membership sites with news, classifieds, directory, forum,,,so all the data for ASP.Net site are stored in MSSQL server (Windows server) and for php using MySql (Apache).
The basic idea for the mirroring is disaster recovery purpose. The hosting company currently we use does backup regularly and we also do backup on local manually. So we may accept small downtime at the moment, say server maintenance or power failure, as long as we don’t lose any data and files.

So in regards to the first point, your looking at a small downtime window (I.E. In most cases server Maintenance and Power Failures should not last more than 4 hours)
In regards to the second point, your pages are database driven and can change at any moment based on user input (I.E. New Classified listing, New Forum Post or etc...)



Sorry but I cannot get your third point clearly. Possible to describe it more details?

Do you use these same servers for e-mail purposes (I.E. Sending/receiving e-mail)? If so, you also want to consider a redundancy plan that will include this as well. If your using a third party service for e-mail then you just need to ensure you have a second/third DNS Server available for any DNS Requests.



And I know it’s matter of cost and time but do you think in industrial standard, even sites on VPS or cloud server, not dedicated server, should have this backup strategies?
It is absolutely not an industry standard as not everyone needs this level of uptime. In today's hosting market, the majority of people are looking for the cheapest service they can provide. DDoS protection, Redundancy and etc all involve significant costs that would be passed on to the consumers and drive their prices up, even if they don't have a need for it.



But I am interested in what the difference in the price tags between seamless and up-to-24hrs offline.

$0/mo - For up to 24 hours offline. You just need to ensure you maintain your own backups, and if your server goes offline then you sign up for another service and restore those backups manually.
$0/mo - $20/mo+ - Implement a Service such as CloudFlare that will cache your site/pages to their CDN network. This reduces the load on your servers and if your servers go offline your content will still most likely be served up by CloudFlare. The downside is if CloudFlare experiences any issues with their network, its out of your control and your sites are offline until they correct their problems. As a note, any dynamic pages (I.E. Forum Posts) may not be served up and obviously any data submissions would not be accepted since your site/database would be offline.
$1500/mo - Move your services to Amazon AWS and utilize their network/hardware for clustering purposes. Again, your relying on their network/infrastructure and if things go down they are out of your control.

Without knowing the specifics on your infrastructure/servers I can't give you an accurate estimate on the costs for complete redundancy, but below would be a rough estimate based on the information I have:
Note: You will see I'm quoting 4 servers. 2 Servers would be dedicated to serving up your SQL/MySQL Databases in a cluster configuration, and 2 servers would be dedicated to serving up the Web content in a cluster configuration.
$5,000+ - Web/SQL Hardware for Site A (4 Servers - One-time cost)
$5,000+ - Web/SQL Hardware for Site B (4 Servers - One-time cost)
$300/mo - Colocation Costs for Site A (Assuming 1/4 rack)
$300/mo - Colocation Costs for Site B (Assuming 1/4 rack)
$500 - Fee to obtain an AS# from Arin (One-time cost)
$1,250/year - Fee to obtain a /20 or smaller IP Block from ARIN
$30,000+ - Network Infrastructure for Site A (Switches, Application Engines, Site Selectors and etc)
$30,000+ - Network Infrastructure for Site B (Switches, Application Engines, Site Selectors and etc)
$15,000+ - SAN Hardware for Site A (Centralized Storage so servers can be clustered locally)
$15,000+ - SAN Hardware for Site B (Centralized Storage so servers can be clustered locally)

$108,950 - First Year Cost (I.E. 9,079.17/mo)
$134,300 - 4 Year Cost (I.E. 2,797.92/mo) After this point you will need to perform upgrades/replace aging hardware.
Note: The prices above don't even touch the costs of any licenses that need to be obtained, or the personnel to implement/maintain this setup.

rubb3rfunk
03-14-2012, 10:00 PM
First of all, thank you so much for this much of information. I really appreciate your time. It's very good no know all the information you gave me.

Actually we don’t much care about downtime if we don’t lose any data and able to re-host our website after a while when the main site disappeared.
Moreover, the importance is up-to-date data and files.
As we read the news of a hosting company attacked by spammer and all data in shared server has lost 9and possibilities of natural disaster) we started to think a backup plan over.
If we can automate mirroring backups in a different location(different country) with a cheap price tag (like hosting fee + bit more?), we would like to go. (BTW CloudFlare is a interesting service)

So what I understood from your advice, there is no such a cheap way to have mirroring backup in a different location.
And what we can do is just to keep managing backups and make a copied site in a different location manually? Otherwise just relying on hosting providers’ backups and keep our owns locally? (Plus maybe CloudFlare?)

Thanks again

MyITGuy
03-14-2012, 10:14 PM
Otherwise just relying on hosting providers’ backups

You absolutely do not want to rely on your hosting providers backups! I've seen so many people posting in a forum I visit (WebHostingTalk.com) that have lost their websites and/or went out of business because they did this because their provider disappeared, the backups were no good or the network just wasn't available to transfer the files.

Pickup a VPS or FTP Backup account that has the amount of backup space you need. Determine the amount of space you need by taking your current space utilization and multiply it by 23 (7 daily, 4 weekly, 12 monthly) if you want to zip the files, or just the same amount of space your utilizing if you plan on using rsync.

Schedule a process that will dump/export your SQL/MySQL to a flat file, then either zip these files up and transfer them via FTP (Probably the preferred method to ensure you can go back to a previous date/backup), or look into rsyncing them to the server (Only transfers files that have changed).

Good luck!

rubb3rfunk
03-14-2012, 10:35 PM
Yes, you're definitely right and it seems that is the way we should take.
Backup data and files with rsync or similar tool and then if anything went wrong in the main site, revive the site manually with the backup in a different server.
It will actually not be mirroring but can be kinda syncing daily. Am I right?
It will be a big challenge for the ICT novice like me though I will start investigate the way.
I may see you in different thread new future :)
Thank you very very much for such a kind advice.