You'll probably read this entry title and think, sure, I have my host run daily backups of all my databases. But what happens if there is a major problem and you can't get to those backups? I've had so many problems with web hosts over my many, many years of running websites, and have learned not to ever trust my files solely to them. Recently, my host ran a network-wide upgrade of their virtualization software. Something was wrong with the kernel and the result was that all the boxes came down...and day after day went by with all of them still inaccessible. Thankfully, I use Navicat to run a daily backup of all my cfwebstore databases, which is saved down to my local system automatically each night. My sites as well are all backed up locally, so it was fairly easy to get everything moved to a new host and get up again quickly.

It's something to consider if the cost of being down for any amount of time would be devastating to you. There are a variety of ways to grab backups of your databases regularly. If you use Access, you can use an FTP program like CuteFTP that will automatically grab copies of files on a scheduled basis. If you use MySQL, Navicat as I mentioned can do backups and data syncs, MySQLYog Enterprise can do this as well. For MS SQL you can usually request your host to place a copy in an FTP location for you to get each day (if you don't have full access to the box yourself). It's something you may want to consider, if only for the piece of mind of knowing that you have full access to a recent copy of your data at all times.

As for me, well this has been a tough year so far with all my hardware issues, and this week has been worse than most dealing with sites and email being down and having to move again to a new host. I just am keeping my fingers crossed that things will get better from here!