[Kjeldahl]

DigitalOcean has a droplet backup solution priced at 20% of the monthly cost of your droplet. Doesn't get much easier than that, if you can afford it. For a small droplet ($10/month) that's a full backup of everything for a buck a month. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understandi...

[batuhanicoz]

It's always good to have your backup off-site. If something happens to DigitalOcean servers, your backups will be gone too.

[adamb_]

It also protects yourself in the event your relationship with DigitalOean goes sour (e.g. CC expires, they're unable to notify, account gets deleted.)

[ryanSrich]

I imagine DO has some contingency plan to prevent both your server and the backup being down at the same time.

[batuhanicoz]

Well, most backups are for unseeable events. It's your choice to trust DO's contingency plans but I for one would like to put my eggs in multiple baskets, depends of the value of said eggs of course. I wouldn't set-up off-site backups for a personal website for example.

[funkyy]

Unless bug in their system, hack attack or human error deletes all droplets from your account. And yes, I have heard of stories like that from other hosting companies where a human error caused the account to be deleted and data removed.

[j_jochem]

DO does that too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11036554

[schwede]

That's nice in theory, but it's better to not to have all your eggs in one basket.

[vonklaus]

Is 20% of $10 a $1.00?That said, if you have a small application, I would pay DO to pack it up. They have global servers & imaging/snapshots. Your app would prob be good if you can get away with that kind of hosting.

I do believe you can take images and snapshots and download them, so using the api, a user could prob rig up a script to make it refundant if it was mission critical

[cyphar]

I don't think that separating your hosting and backup providers is only necessary for "mission critical" things. If you don't have at least three copies of some data, in at least two distinct physical locations/services then it doesn't exist.

[vonklaus]

I agree. However, practically speaking I was just pointing out that if cost & time are extremely important and you are bootstrapping a $10 webapp, $2 for 2mins may be the right choice for the OP and people like him, with 0-500 users.

I do agree though. If the answer to the question, "if this data disappeared, would I be more than slightly miffed?" Is not, NO! Then dumping the data offsite makes sense.

The most inportant thing (which I, and many other make the mistake of) is not only backing it up-- but testing restore time.

If you have your entire database on AWS long-term tape storage, it may not even serve utility. If you can't restore a backup in the timeframe nec, then it is essentially the same as having no backup at all