DNS, MX Records and Server settings

Just though I would give you guys an update

Got the server running exactly the way it should and I have not setup our own Nameservers aswell that redirect domains directly to our server. Email works perfectly through POP and IMAP on all platforms inclduing mobile devices and webmail.

I am now looking at how we can backup this server as if it goes down we are left with nothing. I was considering three options

1 - simple backup - setup an FTP transfer to download all information every night when the server is getting minimal traffic to our in house server. If the dedicated server goes down we can recover all files and settings from the last backup.

2 - a little harder - as above except instead of using our in house server we would buy another dedicated server and do the FTP backup every night.

3 - no idea if this is possible - purchase a second dedicated server and it should always be an exact replica of the main server. This would allow us to change our second names server to this server IP address meaning our customers should see no interruption or at least minimal to their service if either server goes down.

Open to suggestions as always here guys.
 
All of them are viable solutions, however unless the site is critical then replication would be an OTT and costly solution (although there is the advantage of potentially load balancing between them).

Ideally you should have multiple backups, so a remote backup to your office server/storage and to another location (use a dedicated backup solution,
Crashplan-esque or grab a cheap http://www.lowendbox.com high-storage server; doesn't need to be an expensive dedicated box) would be ideal.
A tip though, don't use FTP (it is insecure); rather use SFTP or Rsync over SSH.
 
For the size of the server that needs backed up, around 200GB, purchasing another dedicated server and creating a secure ftp connection every 24hrs seems to be the cheapest option?

We would also back it up to a local server in our office as well though.

Any suggestions?
 
ace2109 said:
For the size of the server that needs backed up, around 200GB, purchasing another dedicated server and creating a secure ftp connection every 24hrs seems to be the cheapest option?

We would also back it up to a local server in our office as well though.

Any suggestions?
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You can pick up a 200GB 'backup' VPS for around $12 a month, granted at that cost it's hosted state-side so you'd need to check up legal aspects of the data being stored, but it's no doubt cheaper than getting another dedicated server.
There are also a handful of enterprise backup solutions out there and alternatively, once you have the backup on your local server you could use a service like BackBlaze which is reasonably well price.

Defiantly backup to as many locations as possible though; you can never have too many backups!
 
There is around 5 sites currently being hosted form the server and there will be more moved over as soon as we sort out the backup situation.

We have only moved over small sites at the minute and we are not moving over the biggest sites just yet until we are confident that everything is working ok as our biggest site would get a fair bit of traffic and we have around 50-60 Email addresses that need moved over as well for that one site which in total have around 10GB of emails, all of which needs downloaded and backed up before anything else happens.
 
Any recommendations on a good backup service for around 200GB with the possibility of growing in the future?
 
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