Akeeba Backup for Joomla!

Tuesday, 21 January 2014 15:29 CST

user19329

Hi Nicholas,

Last year you suggested I move a site to CloudAccess.net. This solved the issue I had then with the previous host not understand how to use the database. See Ticket #14724 if you want to review.

It's time to renew hosting. They are billing me $240 for the site plus SSL (which I bought for my client elsewhere). I've heard good things about Rochen. Their quote is $8.95/month plus $5.50/month for the SSL. This is about $175. Other than some downtime while they change servers I've had no complaints.

From security perspective is Rochen comparable to CloudAccess for shared hosting? Are there other considerations I should be aware of?

Thank you,

Scott

Wednesday, 22 January 2014 01:52 CST

nicholas

Please note that the price with SSL refers to the price of the dedicated IP address required for using an SSL certificate on your site. It doesn't include the price of the SSL certificate itself. Reading your post I am not sure if you realised this difference.

Regarding your question, Rochen is a fairly secure host, especially in their MVS offerings (it's what everyone else calls a VPS). When it comes to shared hosting I have my doubts. While I personally never had an issue with them, I have seen sites –arguably with stupid permission and ownership settings!– being hacked when a different, vulnerable site on the same server got hacked. I'd say that the blame is 20% on the host and 80% on the webmaster who screwed up ownership/permissions. Then again, there are hosts (like SiteGround) which run each site in perfect isolation, making this attack impossible – in other words, they do go the extra mile to secure your sites and their prices reflect it.

I understand that you want to find a good balance between cost and security. In this case I think that Rochen does hit the sweet spot you're looking for. It's quite secure but not quite expensive.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Wednesday, 22 January 2014 10:56 CST

user19329

Hi Nicholas,

I hadn't considered Siteground. It sounds like from a security point they'd be preferred.

Q on plans: Seems like my client would be okay with the "Grow Big" plan but I see the "Geeky" plan has a different set up. On both the database is kept on a separate disk. The geeky it's SSD (vs SAS HD). Is this a serious consideration?

Oh, yes, I understood the different SSL costs.

Thanks,
Scott

Wednesday, 22 January 2014 16:52 CST

nicholas

Their SAS (Serially Attached SATA) drives are fast. Their SSD drives are ridiculously, incredibly, blazing fast. Simply put, it's the speed difference between a BMW 7 series and a Lamborghini Aventador in a drag race. The only question is, do you need that extra speed? If you have a very database-intensive site such as e-commerce, CRM, e-learning or other kind of high traffic site with a large number of database queries per page you need the extra speed. In any other case you can go with the less expensive plan just as fine.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 23 January 2014 09:58 CST

user19329

I understand the difference - my HD's are SSD - only moving parts are the fans. Client's site is large plus she has a decent visitor count and is growing so may go with the larger, faster server. It may inspire me to improve her site's performance in other ways.

Back up Q: I backed up the site yesterday then again today s I wasn't sure about what I saw. In the past there would b 7 parts to the backup (.jO1 - .jO7). yesterday and today there was just one part, the .jpa file. Is this due to an update? I don't think I made any changes to Akeeba Backup.

Thanks,
Scott

Thursday, 23 January 2014 12:07 CST

nicholas

The number of parts is largely irrelevant. What matters is a. the total size and b. what is being backed up. If you suddenly have a much smaller backup I'd suggest extracting both backups and comparing the files. If the difference is some big older backups or error_log file, no problem. If the backup size is, however, pretty much the same then really the number of parts is irrelevant.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 23 January 2014 12:53 CST

user19329

The .jpa+ jO1,- .jO7 of recent backup = jpa of most recent backup. So for some reason site is now being backed up in one chunk instead of 8.

Thanks for explaining this.

Best,
Scott

Friday, 24 January 2014 03:25 CST

nicholas

Most likely you ran the Configuration Wizard again and it detected that archive splitting is not necessary in the current server configuration OR you manually set the part size for split archives to either 0 (no splitting) or a very high value (e.g. 2000Mb) which means that the backup is now a single part. The only problem with big, single part archives is that trying to upload them to remote storage (Amazon S3, Dropbox, Sugarsync, FTP, SFTP, ...) is more prone to timeout errors. That's why we recommend that you first try with small part sizes and then try increasing until you find the "sweet spot" for your local server and remote storage.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Friday, 24 January 2014 09:38 CST

user19329

Yes, I remember now I did re-run the wizard. Dropbox has been accepting the backups without a hiccup. If it becomes problematic will look at this first. Thanks.

SiteGround offers some caching options: Static and dynamic caching as well as memcache and Google Speed Page.
"The Static Cache option, based on the HTTP accelerator Varnish, caches all static content on your account that includes images, CSS files, javascript, flash, and more."

Any significant security risk with any of these?

Thanks,
Scott

Sunday, 26 January 2014 11:50 CST

nicholas

No security risks there.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Sunday, 26 January 2014 12:54 CST

user19329

Hi Nicholas,

Site's up and running there now. A minor glitch in the migration the test site was set up instead of live one. Likely something I did. I restored Akeeba backup taken just before migration and all's well.

Pre-sales and tech support have been very accessible and knowledgeable via chat and tickets. Phone available also but prefer chat/tickets. Good knowledge base support also.

As promised site is much faster.

Thanks again Nicholas for referring them and for your support here.

Have a good week.

Best,
Scott

Monday, 27 January 2014 03:58 CST

nicholas

You're welcome, Scott!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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