How to Create a Hosting Disaster Recovery Plan

No matter what kind of hosting account you’ve got, it’s prone to failure.

Some hosts don’t take backups. Even if the fault’s at their end, your data could be permanently lost.

It’s your responsibility to ensure you have a backup plan in place.

How to Prepare For a Hosting Disaster

A few simple changes can make it easier to cope with an outage.

First, keep your hosting and domain registrations separate. You need to be able to access your DNS records in a pinch, and if your host’s down, you may not be able to access its control panel.

Second, consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to provide protection against an outage.

And third, the most important step of all: create at least one backup of your site on a regular basis.

Creating Hosting Backups

Not all hosting backups are equal. Your host may or may not take backups, but it’s crucial to create your own in addition, and they should be accessible and complete.

There are a few options for this.

• One or more mirrors of your site, including all files.
• Database backups taken on a regular basis.
• An automated solution via a specialised backup host.
• A package from your host that tops up the default backup provision.

In many cases, the easiest and cheapest way is to create a complete mirror. That way, if your site does disappear, you have a secondary copy ready to go: all you have to do is change the DNS.

Having a mirror also saves you hunting for backup disks or login details.

Be Prepared

Disaster recovery is impossible if you don’t have a plan in place. Should the worst happen and you haven’t prepared, you’d have to be incredibly lucky to escape with all data intact.

A little time spent creating automated backups could save you a lot of time later. If in doubt, over-prepare and cover as many bases as you can.