Disaster Recovery planning

[deverill]

Hi everyone,
We are changing hosts and are trying to plan our disaster recovery in case the worst happens. We are running AC 7.0.6 with the database on one server and the application files on another.

My question is: What do we have to do to be back up and running as quickly as possible after a disaster? We do not have the budget to have a second server mirrored and the hosting company won't allow us to make an image of the server because of licensing issues.

We can make a copy of all the files and a dump of the database easily enough but I believe just this would still require us to re-create the websites (2 stores + dev) in IIS and possibly even run the AC7 installer before restoring the files and database.

What do you guys and gals do for backups and rapid disaster recovery within the limits of only one server and backups?

Thanks!

[Michael Ward]

Hi there
The best option you have is to follow the instruction located here.
http://help.ablecommerce.com/faqs/ablec ... ation_.htm

This has been the best method for moving or restoring a website. One thing I would add to this is before you make a backup copy of the database change the schema on the tables and stored procedures to dbo. It will make things easier during the database restore

[mikek]

Hi Deverill,

If you do not have access to a server image backup copy and the server can not be restored from backup image, web sites and SSL still have be manually recreated. I would recommend
keeping local backup of the following:

- full archive in .zip or .rar format of your site Root Folder
- backup copy of site Encryption Keys (Administration > Configure > Security > Encryption Key)
- full backup copy of AbleCommerce database
- backup copy of SSL certificate (if your have direct access to IIS, ssl can be exported trough the IIS interface)
- backup copy of your AbleCommerce license key

If you need to restore your site or move site to different server:

- restore site root folder under a folder on the new server
- create new site in IIS (new application pool, point new site to the root folder etc)
- import SSL certificate from the exported backup copy (in that case you do not have to reissue certificate with new CSR)
- remove existing site encryption key by replacing the key with (<encryption />) : App_Data\encryption.config
- restore database from backup and update App_Data\database.config file
- if the new site root folder path is different AbleCommerce will ask you to re-enter the license key

Following the steps above still require about 30min downtime in case of disaster recovery with the same provider. If you need to switch hosts and
change DNS servers the downtime can be bigger because of IP DNS propagation.

I would also recommend monitoring your site with external monitoring trough PingDom or other site monitoring service and track site performance and
downtime.

Hope this helps ...

[deverill]

Your answers help a lot with planning - you don't want to be sitting in front of a smoking hard drive trying to figure all of this out. These answers are definitely going into our company knowledge base!

Thanks a bunch guys!
Jim