Hi there and apologies in advance for the newbie questions.

I pay a webhosting company for the use of a dedicated server for my website (due the reasonably high level of traffic and the need for a fairly quick hosting system).

I have asked the webhost if they can provide a daily back up of the server and they say that it would cost £75 to set up and then a further monthly fee for the use of a remote backup drive.

I am new to Linux and servers so have a steep learning curve but I believe that there is a way (using a program on the server called "Webmin" that I have apparently) to schedule regular back ups and for these perhaps to be emailed or downloaded to my personal PC machine?

Please would someone take pitty on me and offer some guidance on what I should do.Essentially all I want to achieve is a secure daily backup to protect me in the event of a disaster with the server or website.

Many thanks in advance and apologies again for the "newbie" question.

Paul

I presume with a dedicated server, you have admin access? If you do, you should look into a program called rsync. rsync will make one initial copy of any data you want to backup, then periodically backup the changes in individual files.

Take a look here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync and here:http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

mondo is a good backup utility. it can back up to SAN/NAS, USB, Optical, Tape etc...

Thanks for the help so far.

How can I use rsync or mondo to backup the dedicated server (which is hot situated where I am)?

In other words how can I have the backup either emailed or downloaded to my personal machine?

Sorry if I have missed something here? I understand that these can backup the server sufficiently but I guess my question (becuase of the remote nnature of the dedicated server that my host provides) is to where and how?

I hope that makes sense!

Thanks again.

Paul

rsync really means "remote sync" and it's designed primarily to keep two machines in sync with each other over any kind of connection. However, essentially all you are doing is syncing two folders, one local and one remote. rsync doesn't care whether thats on the LAN, or across multiple networks, or the internet. If you have a read of the links I sent you, it will make more sense.

Hello,

I have never used mondo but I maintain some remote dedicated Linux servers and taking backups is one of my responsibilities. Based on my own tendency to make own applications here is what I have been doing.

1> create public/private SSH key pair to log into the server to be backed up with out any password from your client linux box ( backup PC). at the server put the IP of your client so that it deny all the password-less SSH access request other that your client

2> Decide what files/folders you need to backup from server.

3> At client PC, design a shell script which access the remote server through password-less SSH and run rsync to take the backup. at the very first time it will eat the bandwidth according to your selection on files/folder but after that it would only be *Incremental*

4> run the script with cronjob at your backup PC daily basis. you are done

Hope this help