who here has downtime when their server backs up?
 

Lately i've started getting backups done on my server and every single day when the dbs are being backed up i get about 10+mins of down time.

This REALLY shits me! Who suffers through this?

Any server people able to tell me if this is necessary and if not what I should be asking to be done?

they just have to set the nice level for the backup proccess, usually backup takes lots of resources, and the server hungs the other process giving priority to it, ask them to lower the nice level for this, or get a webhost that can do it to you :)
(check my sig if you do want a new one :))

Yeah, that shit isn't right. They're probably bringing the DB down in order to capture it in a consistent state, which is an important thing, but there are many options for hot backups of databases. Any qualified (read as: halfway decent) technician should be able to sort something out for you. Word of warning though, many of the packages that assist in hot backups of DBs you'll have to pay for. If you want to do it on the cheap, you could try all sorts of tricks, replicate MySQL servers and only bring the secondary down to backup, that sort of thing.

veritas netbackup =]

if its a mysql db just have them use mysqldump to export everything to rotated text files rather then locking the db.

heh thanks - but i'm happy with my current host :)

thanks for the replies everyone :thumbsup

This is one of those issues that people "never care about until they need it". A large number of database driven websites have databases almost excusively read-only (eg writes only happen when the admins update content, and 99% of the transactions are reads / SELECTs by viewers). In those cases, you can probably safely schedule backups on simpler databases (MySQL) and keep the database online without worry (scheduling backups away from when admin INSERTs etc are being done).

For MySQL databases, there are some other proven approaches. Replication was mentioned above, but the biggest advantage of having a "slave" database server with an exact copy of the "master", is that you can drop the slave offline whenever you like, and make backups from it (avoiding the integrity problems).

Great article on this approach here !

PostgreSQL has a few approaches under continuing development, but some with rough edges still.

Now that's making alot more sense thanks for the advice and link.

On a side note, of course I wouldn't care about this until I have to deal with it :winkwink:

My point was just that some of the larger and older commercial database products include considerations like this straight out of the box (hot backups, clusters/grids, other more exotic features). A lot of features people think they don't need when they start a project (and thus lead to the ingredients they choose for their IT recipes) show up as "damn, now what" features later.

It will always come down to using the right tool for the job. Oracle is great, but overkill for many small projects.

in fact you dont need to care about this, if they offer you backups they have to make it run smooth :thumbsup

Some programs will actually shut down databases to run the backup. This could only take a few minutes, but you may want to ask the people running the backup what could be the cause.

I know we have modules for backing up DB's with our software. But there are a great many software that companies will use to run thier backups that may not have that feature.

I hope you don't run into this problem too often.


Cheers!

Some backup systems do this either to capture the databases while they are shut down, or to repair any problems with myisamchk. Are you using a control panel on your server?

I've recently gone through the backup script that comes with DirectAdmin because it does this. It shuts down MySQL in order to scan/repair the DB's, then it starts it back up. After it starts it back up, then it generates dumps. So you can actually modify the mysql module portion of this backup script, and disable the part where it shuts down mysql and runs this check/repair. But if there are any errors in the db it may fail to dump properly.

What control panel does your server have?

I agree.