Online Server Backup

Backing up an entire server online can be one of the easiest tasks to maintain but one of the hardest to set up. If it’s an Internet server at least it already has some nice Internet connectivity, which makes the process faster than backing up a workstation using a consumer grade broadband connection.

In order to backup a server online, the first thing to check is the operating system that’s currently running in our server, as that will make a huge difference when it comes to selecting a backup method and the assisting software. The second is to make sure what kind of services are running in our server, as some services will keep lots of files open, locked or constantly changing which can cause problems to some backup programs as they are unable to verify the consistency of the backup copy.

If you are backing up a Windows based server, you can follow the standard procedure to back up a Windows workstation as the server editions of the Windows operating system aren’t that different from the workstation editions, they just have some services added and a few more features. You can even set up an end user oriented online backup program provided by a consumer grade online backup service provider and it’s most likely it will work. However you can’t expect an end user oriented backup service to handle huge amounts of data (even though some of them advertise unlimited backup space) nor to be as reliable as a server oriented backup service provider. The exception to this rule is database backups as backing up the database files directly can result in unrestorable backups, as those files are usually open all the time. In order to back up databases (such as Microsoft SQL server or MySQL) the best way is to use a program that “talks” directly to the database server either through an API (application program interface) or through the database server’s command line. That way it can generate dumps that will contain the entire database and that can be easily restored from within the database server.

On the other hand, if you’re backing up a Unix based server (Linux, BSD and other unix variants) you can use rsync, which will upload a full backup to a remote server and keep it updated regularly. The same rule of thumb applies to database servers, just as it does on Windows based servers, since the database servers are very similar from one operating system to another.