Site backup - Database and files

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7/5/2011 5:23:42 AM
drac
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Site backup - Database and files

In recent months I have had a need to restore the entire portal a couple times.
The first times, were both a case where I had built up the portal on a server and then had to move to another server. I have MS SQL database and it was impossible to back up and restore. Yes, I sought the assistance of webhost staff. The database have stored procedures that just wouldn’t be backed up. I had to rebuild the content on the new server manually instead.

Next time, the webhost was the victim of a major thunder storm and the server park was flooded, you can certainly understand the problem.

The first case, it is surely many who are familiar with. It can’t be unusual to work on a special development computer / server and then move to a live site.
It would really lift the portal to a new level of security and integrity if there was a decent built-in back-up function.

7/6/2011 6:35:51 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: Site backup - Database and files

Hi,

Sorry but I'm building software for running web sites not for backup of file systems or database management. There are ample tools available for that and most web hosts provide tools for it. No tools that I could build would be better than tools already available so if your host is not able to do backups and restoring of databases correctly using tools designed for that what would make you think the CMS software can do better at solving those problems that are outside the scope of what it is designed for?

The database have stored procedures that just wouldn’t be backed up. 

That is not true, SQL Server Management tools can backup and restore a database correctly and nothing about a stored procedure will cause any problem. The only problems would be if you back it up on a newer version of sql server then you can't restore it on an older one. But in that case there are tools that can do it correctly, free tools such as this, or paid tools such as the Red Gate SQL bundle. These tools can script off the tables procedures and the data so that one can run the script on a new database.

If one wants very simple backup they could use the SQL CE version of mojoPortal which is a file based database so if you backup the web site files the database is also backed up. However SQL CE is not as robust, myself I'd rather have a SQL Server database and optimize my site for performance rather than optimize it for easy backup.

To mitigate against environmental catastrophes one should copy the backups to an off site location, ie download it to your local machine so that if something major happens you still have a recent copy.

Best,

Joe

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