Levels of Backup Data Integrity

Posted on by J. Mays
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Most of us have had a time (or two) when we’ve accidentally deleted something or have had a disk crash that led to data loss. This can be a painful, harsh lesson in maintaining backups – don’t let it happen to you (or happen again!)


We strongly recommend maintaining regular backups and having a solid backup scheme. Having backups in place can mean the difference between a momentary blip in your websites’ services and losing days or even weeks of valuable data – forum posts, sales orders – anything stored on your server.

Data Integrity

Data integrity is loosely defined as is the assurance that data is consistent and correct. A logical backup scheme will help to ensure your data remains intact. There are various levels of backup redundancy and safety. The least safe and least redundant method is a backup on the same disk partition. An example of this would be backing up your user accounts into the /home partition. If that partition becomes corrupt or damaged, the backups are destroyed along with the original accounts. Thus, if one must use the same physical drive as the home directory, we recommend using a different partition.

A better idea is to use a different physical drive. Dedicated customers typically have at least two drives in their servers, and one is often configured as a separate backup drive. This allows for a complete physical or logical catastrophe to happen to the main drive without impacting the backups. This is a much safer configuration than using the same partition.

What if something happens to the server itself?
Generally, it is a very rare occurrence to have an event render both drives in a server to become unusable or unrecoverable. Still, if something physically happens to your server, the only way to guarantee the safety of your data is to have an off-server backup solution. This can be another server in the same building, or, better yet, a server in another building entirely. Liquid Web offers two remote backup solutions, which we will cover below. It is also possible to set up your own off-server solution, even if you simply FTP backups to your own desktop computer periodically.

What if something happens to the whole data center?
While we employ the best disaster prevention and recovery methods to protect your data and your server, we want you to be prepared if the unthinkable should happen. In the unlikely event something catastrophic occurs to render one of our data centers unreachable or unrecoverable, a backup in another physical location is important. Our Guardian backup solution offers backups at a remote location.

===

Liquid Web’s Heroic Support is always available to assist customers with this or any other issue. If you need our assistance please contact us:
Toll Free 1.800.580.4985
International 517.322.0434
support@liquidweb.com
https://my.liquidweb.com/

Avatar for J. Mays

About the Author: J. Mays

As a previous contributor, JMays shares his insight with our Knowledge Base center. In our Knowledge Base, you'll be able to find how-to articles on Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and much more!

Latest Articles

Blocking IP or whitelisting IP addresses with UFW

Read Article

CentOS Linux 7 end of life migrations

Read Article

Use ChatGPT to diagnose and resolve server issues

Read Article

What is SDDC VMware?

Read Article

Best authentication practices for email senders

Read Article