Backup Sitecore 7 application. Database backups vs Serialization vs Installation packages

Question

I haven't got much of Sitecore practical experience in setting up backups. What I've found out so far:

Sitecore backup process contains 2 steps:

1. Filesystem backup
2. Sitecore data backup

While 1 step is pretty straightforward, 2nd can be performed in several different ways:

1. Master/Core/Web databases backup
2. Serialization of Master/Core via /sitecore/admin/serialization.aspx
3. Creating installation packages via Package Designer

Restore process is:

1. Replace IIS files with backup files
2. Restore DB backup / De-serialize sitecore items and publish Master>Web / Install Sitecore package (and publish Master>Web?)

From what I can see:

1. Master/Core/Web databases backup looks pretty robust, the only restriction is the target database server version should be the same (?)
2. Serialization looks like this is default Sitecore solution for this kind of stuff, it is not dependent on DB server version
3. Creating installation packages: too many steps, less reliable solution as potentially we can make more mistakes here, however we can automate this process using PS

Would be great to see some answers from people who have experience with setting up backups for Sitecore stuff, to understand what are the advantages/disadvantages of each approach?

Answer 1

Serializing both master and core is very time consuming, and the restore is time consuming as well.

I always recommend setting up a job, that takes a full sql backup every Sunday, that also performs the different tasks on optimizing the databases.

Then the other days of the week, only take a incremental backup.

That way the backups ain't that big, and it is fast to restore a backup.

Answer 2

We only do database backups, this I think is pretty standard. The data is in databases and taking backup of databases is pretty straightforward.

Serialization I don't have that much expirience with, but I think this isn't something that can be used for backup out the box.

Creating installing packages shouldn't be used for backup, except by developers. Sitecore packages are supposed to be used to move data between development and production, making modules, resuables parts of a solution etc. this is something that should be used by developers. Saving the media library to a zip file is just gonna take up to much space and take resources.

In short, data is in databases, take backup of that. There are a lot of good ways of taking backup of databased. The issue with databases being Sitecore version dependant is a minor issue, as it will only be a problem on larger upgrades and if you have made a large upgrade I would and suddenly need data past the backups you took just after upgrade, then make an "old" site and extract data from that using Sitecore packages.