Backup correct retain strategy

[leonep]

Hi,
my data is growing and we are around 360GB......
I currently do a weekly on an FTP server (retain 1 backup)
after this i do a locally backup weekly (retain 3 backups)
finally I do another daily local backup ( retain 3 days)

I was thinking of taking more space on the FTP server and making 1 monthly, 3 weekly and 3 daily.
since there are costs, I want to know what hosting companies offer normally.
I want to offer a good sustainable service..
thanks

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! I'm not sure what the question is here - are you looking for other users' experience with various backup tools?

 

[leonep]

I try to be clearer
How many backups do hosting companies usually offer for shared business hosting?
may be it is better to ask in webhostingtalk forum !

 

[rbairwell]

In a thread about keeping remote backups:

I have the following settings:
* Daily backup (every day): Retain 2
* Weekly backup (every Sunday): Retain 2
* Monthly backup on the 1st and 15th: Retain 4

This way if a file/site gets deleted accidentally, I can roll back to the previous day (and go back a further day in case I've just missed the backup/rotation window). If there's a problem (such as a site exploit which was sneaky), I can go back to last week or a fortnight ago - and for safety, I then have the last 2 months available.

That's 8 backups being retained on the server offering a high level of coverage and flexibility for recovery - I'm not sure what you are aiming for for just one backup per week but keeping 2.5 months worth (and then an additional 4 months worth).

The "Retention setting" - as per the backup configuration documentation - is the number of those backups actually kept on your server even after it has transported/copied them to a remote destination. If you are using a remote backup destination, then it's only worth keeping enough backups on the server for "rapid/urgent restores" - otherwise it's just wasted backup space (as they'll be stored remotely anyway). In your case, with the once weekly backups, it isn't worth keeping more than 4 of them as anything further than that is covered by the monthly backup.

Most web hosting companies either offer "real time backups" for their own usage (using something like R1Soft'/ConnectWise's Continuous Data Protection) or just take daily backups for a week. Of course, they also say they can't guarantee backups as it's the users own responsibility so some may be "economical with the truth".