One of our clients, who manages their own hosting/backups for Vtiger, had a database corruption recently and lost all their Vtiger data because they did not have a backup. That’s right, all their data is gone — they did not set up any backups. Since it is so fresh in my mind, I thought I would use this incident to remind everyone to check on your backups. Here are some thoughts on managing backups:
1) Set up an automated nightly onsite backup of your Vtiger code and data. Keep daily onsite backups of your last 30 days, and monthly backups for the last year. Ideally put them on a separate drive or server.
2) Backup your data offsite as well (at least your last days backup). Most offsite backup services will give you a daily report on the status of your backups. Open the emails regularly and check.
3) Don’t assume your backups are working. Even if the reports are showing your data is backing up, there is a a small chance there is an issue. Restore one of your backups a couple times a year to be certain you are covered.
4) A few of the developers on this forum have automated backup programs that will make it easy to back up your data. They are not expensive and if it will get you to a point where you are doing a better job backing up, then it is money well spent.
I hope others will join in with additional thoughts.
