I’ve recently moved this blog to a virtual server hosted on Rackspace. Many things impress me about Rackspace, but the one thing I’m really excited about right now is the backup system. On our old managed shared hosting, HostGator, the few times we messed something up and needed to restore a full backup, we had to pay US$15 for the privilege. Now on Rackspace, I can do the same thing with a just a few clicks! Now whenever I update WordPress (for example), I make a manual backup through the rackspace management panel before proceeding, just in case I break something!
It’s this easy:
3 clicks to the backup settings
Now it’s just a matter of specifying a name for the backup, and clicking Save Backup.
Make a manual Backup
While the backup is running, you’ll see an icon of a camera with a little grey clock overlay. When the backup is complete, the clock turns green. On my 10GB VM, this took less than a minute.
Backup in Progress
Once the backup is ready, restoring it is just as easy. Just select the backup you want to restore and click Restore Selected.
Restoring a Backup
Absolutely no sweat! Thankyou Rackspace! The official Rackspace Blog also discusses a WordPress plugin for backing up WordPress files and database to storage on EC2. That’s something I’ll have to try out next! After all, this is Serious Business.