08Jul Use DropBox to back up your server?
Yet another use of dropbox I use it to back up my server…
First I installed dropbox on my server. Free account using an email from one of the domains on that server. I could not use my primary account since everything on that account would also end up on my server. That is not something I want or need.
So then I wrote my backup scripts to backup the databases and copy them into my dropbox on the server. Easy. At least everything is in the cloud. The problem is dropbox does not run as a service. So I had to adjust that. I found the instructions here:
http://superuser.com/questions/41992/how-to-configure-dropbox-as-a-service.
I then removed it from my local user account.
The server I have has severely restricted RAM so running dropbox all the time was not ideal.
So I decided to get a little more creative. At night I run my backups and copy the files to my dropbox folder. I do not have dropbox running at this point. I let the copy take place and all that then an hour later start dropbox. Then 2 hours later kill dropbox. The only real risk there is that dropbox might not have the time to sync the files. I can always check this locally though. How?
I want to get the database down to my harddrive as well. This way I can take monthly backups too.
So on the server within my dropbox folder I right clicked the folder containing the backups. Went to dropbox and share. Then I entered my primary accounts email.
On my laptop I needed to accept the share. So now when the server updates a file at night my primary account gets the file. When I start up my laptop in the morning — every morning — I should have some updated databases. Also I have a machine running at home — call it my home server (rather than my bittorrent server where I host all the linux distros) and it gets the file immediately at night. When I start my laptop up at home my laptop actually gets the files from that server over the lan. Fast!
I upgraded my primary account to 50 Gigs too so that I have plenty of space.
