When's the last time this forum was backed up?

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single files or databases can be pushed actually from any of the hourly snapshots. the client/server communication is two way and can be done while live. The database is all or nothing of the hourly backups as of current, this could be remedied with an add-on to the backup suite that does for databases what it does for files already.

Sorry for bumping a dead thread, but it seems a lot of people are really concerned about how backups are done. If you want to know exactly how our backups are done, read on - if you don't care for a bunch of technical jargon, then skip it.

Our backups for all our servers are handled in exactly the same way, including for the server hosting WP. There is a kernel-level driver that sits between the file system on the server and the block level device (hard drive or RAID array). Block changes are intercepted by this driver as they are written to the drive, and are passed onto our backup system for storage every hour. However, all changes to the blocks are stored - so every change on the system is kept as a snapshot. Transfers to/from the backup servers are over a LAN, and encrypted in transit. Each server has the option to store the backups encrypted.

Restores are done at the block level (for doing a bare-metal restore of an entire hard drive), or at the file/folder level. The SQL database powering WP is backed up at the database level, however it's possible to restore to an alternate location, and use SQL tools to migrate over specific changes in tables.

As a backup to our backup system, data is archived to an off-site facility in the event of a physical failure at our datacenter.