How do you use backups on DO? I use salt stack to manage state on all my servers. The only server I care about would be the server that manages salt... but creating a one-time image of the OS and saving all the salt files in a git repo is enough of a backup for me.
As for databases, I have a script that runs and stores them on S3.
Basically the DO backups are for machines that can tolerate 24/hrs data loss-- which to be honest is the vast majority of things. Would I run critical stuff this way? No. My personal websites/blogs and jerkoff clients? Yes. What do you want for $1/month for a backup?
For things I'm a bit more paranoid about I do postgres/mysql backups at regular intervals, and rsync any data directories to another server.
To me the advantage of the backups is this-- if something awful happens, I can restore 99% of my data in, 60 seconds? Then you're only moments away from a working server if you need to shuttle additional data/sql backups over? So be it.
I was an admin for a UC at one time in my life and there I learned that backups are THE most important part of any job. Being a good admin is like being a father I suppose, you do a lot of shit to protect people that will never be needed or noticed. I got myself out of numerous hopeless situations with a good backup strategy which I tested on a regular basis. PRACTICE YOUR RESTORES. The best example of this was my last day at this particular job-- I had an affection for my colleagues and threw a brand new set of AIT tapes into the backup system, and did a full L0 backup of our 7 sun A1000 arrays. In my mind this was the last thing I'd be able to do for my friends.
I swear to jebus the next morning my phone rang-- it was my replacement. He'd rm -rf'd the entire lab's home directories, decades of research worth millions of dollars-- gone. I told him to look to his left and pray to god the light was green and not red. :)
How do you use backups on DO? I use salt stack to manage state on all my servers. The only server I care about would be the server that manages salt... but creating a one-time image of the OS and saving all the salt files in a git repo is enough of a backup for me.
As for databases, I have a script that runs and stores them on S3.