backup to an external server

backup to an external server

by edwin rosado -
Number of replies: 6
Hello,

I would like to know if it is possible to store automatic backups onto a server outside of the moodle installation. We are working with a hosted moodle solution and we are running into issues with surpassing our alloted storage allocation, which is inhibiting us from implementing an adequate backup schedule. It would be great if we could specify an external location in the automatic backup settings.

Is this possible?
Average of ratings: -
In reply to edwin rosado

Re: backup to an external server

by Jody Baty -
I'm also interested in this, possibly using Amazon S3. Is it possible?
In reply to edwin rosado

Re: backup to an external server

by Ravishankar Somasundaram -
Dear Edwin rosado,

YES, it is possible, you can use amazon aws and s3 to create instances and use scalr to maintain your instances,

and as jody wanted we have something called snapshots, which takes an entire image of your files and stores in S3. (No need to fear space consumption because of the images which are taken by snapshots, its an incremental backup ;))

checkout scalr for more details, i heard amazon themselves have comeup with a service similar to scalr which does all these.

checkout amazon web site for more details.I myself (so do many) have used scalr supported moodle hosting with amazon , so try it out, and if you stuck somewhere put up your queries.
In reply to Ravishankar Somasundaram

Re: backup to an external server

by edwin rosado -
Thank you. I actually have an external server that I would like to use. My question is how to specify or direct course backup to go to the server in moodles course backup config? Thanks for the help.
In reply to edwin rosado

Re: backup to an external server

by Greg Lund-Chaix -
If you just want the backup files to be saved to an external server, the easiest way to do that is to do the following:

1) Mount the directory on the external server in a place Moodle can write to using NFS/samba/whatever.

2) Go to Admin->Courses->Backups and set the "Save to" (backup_sche_destination) to be the mounted network location.

3) Enable scheduled backups (if you haven't already).

-Greg
In reply to Greg Lund-Chaix

Re: backup to an external server

by edwin rosado -
Thanks, Greg. I'll give that a shot.
In reply to edwin rosado

Re: backup to an external server

by Ravishankar Somasundaram -
Dear edwin rosado,


as greg lund said you can follow his steps to save the course backups alone to an external server, But in case of disaster i dont think you will be able to recover your entire site with just course backups. .

So it is always advisable to make a database dump sequentially and tag it with the course backups and perform a rotational backup mechanism on them so that you save space by avoiding the huge piling up of backups.