Not backing up creates the biggest problems our customers experience.
We recommend a couple of strategies.
What we do not recommend are tape drives. In theory they should work. In practice, there are two problems:
There are different strategies if you are backing up with Wintix version 5, the MySQL version.
What is different?
Wintix 5 and Webtix save the data on a “server.” This is a separate computer which sole purpose is to handle data. It gives some valuable advantages (suitable for heavy load, better data integrity, better security, data mining). It is the standard for e-commerce.
The data still needs to be backed up. But there are other important considerations when backing up. The solution is re-defining the concept of backups.
A different definition of backup.
A backup has to be defined as the ability to survive failures. It needs to be affordable and doable by people. The way to do this is to have a pre-configured (and tested) backup system. This does not mean tape drives (which are unreliable and difficult from which to restore). It requires a setup of hardware and software that is constantly plugged in and performing continuous backups. When there is a failure, or simply a need for maintenance on the main server, everyone switches to the backup server and data. The backup should be portable so that it can serve as an off-site backup. Switching to another server in Wintix and Tixsales is a simple change in sqlrdd.ini.
Backing up is not as expensive as it sounds.
An inexpensive laptop is the obvious choice. Used laptops are even less expensive. All it needs is a network card and a hard drive and to be set up as a LAMP server. Then, set it to do an automatic backup as needs dictate (once a day or once an hour). The backup gets checked by running reports through the HTML interface.