backing up database

Hi,

I'm a potential DiscountASP.net customer and I want to know how you guys, as existing customers, backup your MS SQL server databases. Other hosting services provide FTP addess to .bak files, but apparently this service is not provided here. Do you guys know of a workaround?

Bernard

 

I believe that would be very time consuming for large databases. it would be great if you offer .BAK backup access. Is there a reason why you do not offer this feature?

 

I have had no problem restoring backup files to my machine with my current hosting service. DTS is not intended for backups. I hope my feedback was useful.

 

I think his intention for DTS was to import/export data and objects not backups. My concern with that would be, is my data secure while transfering from Host to my local machine. Does anyone know about that?

 

DTS is not as reliable as downloading a single password-encrypted BAK file from a server. i personally find it very unreliable for transfering large data objects over the net.

 

I agree with the general sentiment here. We have been using DASP for a few weeks, so far so good. Tonight I go to do my first production release of new code and am looking for how to back up my DB -- no dice. Anyone from DASP who may read this -- this is a deal-breaker for me and likely many others.

Anyone who has ever used DTS will attest that it is not made for backing up and restoring an entire DB. Yes, it can work for that, but it fails often if you have a non-trivial schema, and it is often very difficult to tell why. Remotely it is slow as molasses. It is non-transactional -- if you are copying over existing data that is uniquely-indexed, you have to drop the existing data FIRST, then hope that your DTS runs OK (it won't). Etc. etc.

Even if DASP did backup on a schedule and restore on demand (which they don't apparently) that's still not good enough. If I'm upgrading my app right now, I don't want to potentially still lose several hours of data if I need to roll back. I want to back up NOW, test, then restore back to NOW if anything has gone wrong. That is pretty well the way things work for most people in production environments.

You guys need to figure out how to support this -- just saying that it's 'complex' and that I might 'mess it up' is not really acceptable when I'm trying to support a professional, production application.

[EDIT]: I went ahead and attempted to DTS my current tables (only, no SPs, views, UDTs, etc.) from DASP to my local machine just to see if I was blowing this out of proportion. I followed the instructions listed in article 10041 just to be sure. My copy failed due to the error 'Windows NT user or group 'mssql10\SQLAgent' not found. Check the name again.' As always, a typically helpful SQL error message. Searching on that error brings up one article on this forum, but it does not really address the issue (http://community.discountasp.net/default.aspx?f=16&m=5063). Since mssql10 is the name of the DASP server I'm connected into, it implies to me that the issue is on the DASP side (as noted by the author of the referenced thread) but the response in that thread did not really answer the question. I am not scheduling the DTS job -- I am trying to run it immediately.

[EDIT again]: I realized that I did not follow the directions in KB article 10041 correctly. I did still have the security stuff checked incorrectly (I mis-read the article) which was causing the error. I can now get DTS to work and am still pursuing what my overall deployment strategy should be using DTS.

Post Edited (BMoeskau) : 11/1/2005 7:11:17 AM GMT

 

Try out Webhost4Life [WebHost4Life dot com/default.asp?refid=bernard] if you want database backups. They may not offer as many features as discountasp.net but they also allow multiple domains on the same account. I found them to be pretty reliable, support is just as good as discountasp.net, and I have multiple sites hosted with them.


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Post Edited By Moderator (dasp) : 11/3/2005 3:25:08 AM GMT