Australian Webmaster Blog

Having backups is extremely important and backing up your web site is no exception.

Personally I have a nightly script that backs up my databases and other data files and compresses them in to a single file – creating a new file each day. Periodically I would logon and download the backup file to ensure I also have a backup locally and clear away old backups.

With my sites growing, space was becoming an issue so I recently decided to look in to enhancing my backup routine by backing up to another server.

As my server is hosted in Sydney and due to the size of data it would be copying each night I wanted to find another Sydney based server for back ups.

I found that a lot of hosting companies don’t permit this type of use on their hosting accounts. I did however find a solution thanks to Sydney based Web City, and it’s free.

Their online storage product is specifically for backing up your data online, and at the moment they offer 10GB of online storage free of charge, or 100GB of online storage for $89/year. You can connect using FTP, SFTP, Samba(SMB)/Windows Share or SCP.

So far it’s working well for me.

There are a couple of restrictions, mainly:

• it must not be used for file sharing – it’s for storage and backup purposes only
• only allowed to use 2 different IP addresses per day
• can only have one FTP connection at the same time

If you are using rsync, the Free Account doesn’t support it however the Pro Account ($89/yr) does.

Note: this is not a paid advertisement, nor am I associated with Web City.