Best automatic backup solution?

I'm using the Turnkey Linux Wordpress install in my classroom to allow my students to do all of their writing projects, but every time we have a power outage for the school (or the administrators unplug all of the servers to avoid lighting damage) I lose posts that my students have worked on.

Solutions I've tried:

Using WP plugins that can automate the backup but the problem here is that I can't actaully automate the process because the WP installation won't send the email with the backup file and you can't automate a backup locally.

I've looked for a way to automate the backup of my virtual box (taking a snapshot of the image on a schedule) but haven't found one.

I have the Wordpress Virtual Machine hosted on Windows Server 2003.

Any ideas on how to fix the email settings or how to automate the snapshot feature?

Sorry if this issue has already been addressed; I did google it and search the forums here.

Thanks

Replies (4)

Costs should be minimal but you can backup locally too

Reply 1 2010-09-23

Liraz has discussed using TKLBAM locally here. There is also some info in the TKLBAM FAQ. Please note that even to use local backup you will still need a TKL Hub account (currently in private beta but available free by invitation, request an invite here). As part of the Hub you'll need to sign up for an Amazon account too (credit card details required - even though you will be charged nothing unless you use Aactually use Amazon).

As for TKLBAM costs, I recently posted on that on another thread, here's the relevant paragraph:

As for cost, don't let that hold you back! S3 costs are tiny! Currently they charge $0.15/GB/mth for most areas (ie $2.25/GB/year!). Data transfer in & out is currently free (although some data transfer will be chargable from 1st Nov 2010). Have a look at the full Amazon pricing details here. So unless you have a huge amount of data, its quite cheap!

Because TKLBAM will happily do incremental backups, once you've done your initial backup I'd imagine that most of the hourly ones will be very small. Obviously I can't say for sure, but assuming, its mostly text, I'd be surprised if you'll need to backup even close to a GB.

Thanks

Reply 2 2010-09-23

Thanks Liraz for the help. I looked at the new TKLBAM and like it, but I was worried about the cost. I'm not a high-powered, high-payed IT professional yet just a lowly school teacher. About how much do you think it would cost to set a daily backup of a standard install of wordpress with about the 10-15 new posts a day? Or can I run TKLBAM locally?

Try TKLBAM (TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration)

Reply 3 2010-09-23

TKLBAM is a new feature we recently announced. This sort of thing is exactly what we designed it for. You can setup a cron job that does the backup on an hourly basis. But even an hourly backup won't prevent you from losing posts written in the last hour. If you want that kind of reliability I propose you don't host locally but in a cloud instance (e.g., Amazon EC2). The TurnKey Hub makes setting up a WordPress installation very easy.

TKLBAM

Reply 4 2010-09-27

Thanks guys.

I just used TKLBAM for the first time and it was very easy to setup. Sometime this week I'll perform a restore to simulate a disaster recovery. I really like TKLBAM, as a I've had issues with data loss before when my virtual machines have been switched off unexpectantly.

Thanks for the work you guys do there. Hope you're doing well. I love using wordpress for intranets on the local network; Just makes it super easy and cheap.

Mike