Planning for Disaster

Posted By ê¿ê on September 21st, 2009

: Image by // solidether via Flickr

One of the things I’ve been harping on for months now is having some kind of disaster plan formulated for our data. Of course the perfect plan would be to have our database mirrored on another server located somewhere else in the country – our California office came to mind initially for several reasons. Our new IT manager has the same opinion as far as the disaster plan is concerned and we have been working on getting that up and going.

We’re using VM Ware to clone our current system and have moved our backups from tape to a portable hard drive that we rotate taking home with us at night. We discussed using some kind of online backup service, but vetoed that idea as none of us are truly comfortable with our data being held by a third party.

As a blogger, I also have a backup plan in place. I have a routine backup job set to run once a week to backup my database and that file is emailed to me. I have also set up to have the system files backed up and sent monthly. I don’t change the basic look of the blog all that often, so backing up those files less often makes sense.

Setting up the job to send the system files is a bit more tricky as it involves you logging into your server and setting that up in the cron jobs. Or you could just FTP the files to a folder on your computer.The cron job can be scheduled though while the FTP has to be done manually, leaving a period of time open when you might forget or not get to it.

I’ve also installed MySQL on desktop unit not connected to the internet as well as some programs that simulate a server and restore those files to that server periodically just to make sure they are good files. I probably don’t do that as often as I should, but at least I know how to restore from backup to MySQL — and in all honesty it’s not that much different from SQL.

If you don’t back up your database you truly should take a look at doing that. It’s easy to set up a job straight through WordPress to send you that backup file as often as you would like it to come. I do it once a week as I figure a weeks’ worth of posts is the most I’m comfortable with losing, but you could set it up to run as often as you wished.

Stay safe!