In today’s gp/bp an open door will be kicked in: take your backups offsite!
I was actually tempted to create a poll to see how many of you do not have proper backups, and how many of you do not take those backups offsite. It is a simple piece of advice and relatively simple to set up. Offsite in this case would ideally be physically offsite: to a different server in a different building in a different location. A start however is to take them to a different server. And don’t make the mistake of thinking a different VPS on the same physical server is good enough. True, that will protect you from operating system failure of the guest, but it will likely not protect you from hardware failure, or operating system failure on the host OS.
Also, take good care of how you are getting your backups offsite. A normal FTP connection might do the job, but it is hardly secure. Ideally, use SFTP or rsync over ssh to stream your backups offsite.
Some people still take their backups offsite by physically moving a cd, dvd or tape from one location to another. It’s a good start, but in this age of cheap broadband, you might want to think about doing this online. A cron-job is much less likely to not run than it is for you to forget to move that tape.
In our good practice / bad practice series, we will provide you with byte/bite sized pieces of advice on what we consider good (or bad) practice in MySQL-land. The topics can be just about anything, so expect random things to come up. Also, the level of advancedness greatly varies. A topic might be a no-brainer for some, a reminder for others and a revelation for a third person. We strive to tender to all of you!