WordPress MU

So, how do you do it? I am still learning how to handle this whole thing, and my main concern is backing up.

My db is at over 350mb, which takes over an hour with mysqldump...how can I speed it up? How do you have set it up?

Also, should we be backing up the database weekly, PLUS backing up the blogs.dir directory? Isn't this where everyone's photos are stored?

Adding onto Konstan's post, I would like to also know how often you backup the required files and/or databases? Once a month? Once a week?

Also, do you tell your members they should backup their blogging posts as well? Like save a copy of their posts through Word of something? I just want to make sure I am doing ALL that I can to safeguard the blogs. I don't want all of their sites and blogs getting lost.

That would be a great way to have instant enemies...LOL

I do weekly backups, usually late at night when my traffic is at its lowest point. I stop apache, run mysqlcheck and then backup. Once its done apache is started again.

I know there must be a better way :P

Edit: I backup blogs.dir monthly, since that is not going anywhere.

I try and do backups a couple times a month at this point. I should do it more often though. I need to get into a habit of doing it once per week. From what I have read here though, I should probably even be doing it MORE than once a week.

Is there another way for the USERS to back up as well?

And I just found some more information, and yes, I should be backing up the content directory. : ) Because of the plugins, and uploaded files from users. So now I understand that aspect of MU. : )

db backups - do it in chunks in phpmyadmin, if that's what you have. In the export area, you can select just some of the tables instead of all.
Weekly is good, daily is better if you have alarge site. But if it's that large, you'll want to use somethign other than phpmysdmin to backups dbs.

Yes, blogs.dir directory is where everyone's photos are stored. I'd do that weekly, or you could skip it. One would assume that users have backups of their own pictures.

I tell users they can use the Export function to make backups of their blogs for their own piece of mind. Weekly or monthly is okay for that, as I guess it can hog the system a bit.

Also, if you have a local copy of your site mirrored on your own computer, that is excellent as well. Then you have a backup of *everything* including code and edited files, in case the whole site gets lost.

mysqldump shouldn't take over an hour for 350MB.

I've got a 110MB DSPAM database which takes about 30 seconds to backup using mysqldump.

I have a script which creates daily, weekly and monthly dumps of my databases and rotates them as necessary.

Thanks for the information. I will definitely start backing up as you say, etc...

SteveAtty, correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't it take longer to backup depending on how fast your connection is?

For mysql, I use: http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

For the files, I just tar up the whole mu directory every once in a while and rotate the backups.

Well I would assume that any decent host would give you a shell account so you could backup locally (even my own ISP gives me a pretty unrestricted shell account with access to GCC etc), compress the output and then you can pull the resulting archive off and store it somewhere.

I have shell access, and it took me like 2 hours yesterday to backup the database which was at 430mb.

I dont know why it takes so long?

If i were backing mine up and downloading it to my computer, it would take me that long as well.

Gotta admit that this really is a question more for your host as they may have software in place already for you to be doing backups. Especially if you're doing half gig backups daily.