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5 Tips for Backing Up Your VPS

Whether you’re running a simple start-up page or a big E-Commerce website that attracts thousands of daily visitors, information and its safety are equally important to everyone.

You might implement SSL encryption, antiviruses, firewalls, and other security measures to prevent any possible hackers from gaining access to your info and that’s great.

5 Tips for Backing Up Your VPS

What most seem to forget though, is that data loss is as damaging to the business as unwanted parties stealing your information. Even providers that offer cheap VPS have solutions, like storage services, to prevent this and users should take advantage of this by doing regular backups.

Decide which data needs backups

It’s essential to properly prioritize the info that you want to create copies of. To be prepared for the unexpected, it’s even advised to create several backups and spread it throughout multiple destinations. This maximizes the chances that your website will stay online without any disruptions, thus making disaster recovery much easier.

Users can do:-

  • Full Backups. These are done daily, and it copies all info on the server and puts it in one place. While you can retrieve individual files, it’s generally used for full system recovery.
  • Incremental Backups. These track the changes and updates done to the data and create multiple restoration points. That’s why it’s fairly easy to recover very specific data.

Generally, even those that operate on cheap VPSs choose to implement a mixture of both and save it on separate storage. This way, you can do full or individual file recovery without wasting too much time.

Choose where it will be stored

There are several backup solutions that you can choose from. The copies can be stored:

  • Locally. When it comes to local backup, data is stored in a medium that is kept close to the source. This can be another internal or attached hard drive, NAS (Network Attached Storage), and more. This helps better protect digital content from physical failure, accidental deletion, and mistakes.
  • Remotely. With offsite backup, the content is stored across different geographical locations in cloud-based servers. Here, data can be copied regularly whenever a change is made.

It’s strongly recommended to implement both methods. It drastically minimizes recovery time and data loss. Most cheap VPS providers help with these solutions by additionally offering storage services.

Automate the process

Most hosting control panels, like cPanel, Plesk, Interworx, and others, have tools that allow you to automate backups. It’s generally advised to use them and create a schedule for this process. You can back up the files yourself, but it’s a very time-consuming process and you can make accidental mistakes along the way. It’s best to leave this to the machine and focus on other important server maintenance tasks.

Select different backup locations

This can also be called having “backups for your backups”. It may seem redundant, but it’s an essential thing to do and very effective when there is an emergency. Even cheap VPS providers have special built-in tools for extra security measures but taking things into your own hands can never be too much, especially when it comes to data. You can use such tools as Secure File Transfer Protocol to keep separate copies in several locations of your choice.

Test them just in case

There’s a very low risk of this, but sometimes backups aren’t configured the right way. Some crucial system files can become scrambled during the process and implementing a corrupt copy can lead to undesired results during an emergency. That’s why it’s necessary to regularly test your backups to ensure that they’re working properly. You can do this by restoring groups of data to see whether they work as they’re supposed to be and aren’t causing any issues.

It doesn’t matter what kind of expensive or cheap VPS you’re using or what kind of page you’re running on the virtual servers. To ensure maximum information safety, overall system availability and to minimize business risks, data backups are crucial. Choose a proper storage solution for your info, automate the backups and do it regularly. This will be beneficial when the unforeseen happens.