Hello,

I want an automated (key point!) backup solution for a portal or DNN instance. It seems that Evotiva is the only module offering such capabilities, but it looks a little old (unless I am mistakened!) and the website is very confusing. I am not sure if I would need BackupScript or BackupNative and there seem to be free versions/pro versions and enterprise versions and I can't for the life of me work out which one I need and what the differences are.

How do you handle your portal/DB backups? It has to be automated and I want to forget about this until a restore it needed (and it should preferably work ;)

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Thanks,
Rodney
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Rodney,

I've been looking at Evotiva for quite a while.

If you are wanting to backup DNN on a remote host, you really need to use BackupScript. BackupNative requires that you have write privileges on the database server or some share on the network where the database is located. That does a "native" SQL backup using internal SQL Server mechanisms to create a db.BAK file. That is good for when you host locally ... although, being an MS SQL DBA who hosts DNN locally, I don't need Evotiva to do that for me; if you host locally but don't have SQL database expertise, then BackupNative could be a helpful tool.

But I also host DNN sites remotely on a hosted server, and this is where BackupScript can come in. It produces an SQL script that can recreate the entire database - structure and contents. That is essentially just a text file with .sql extension.

The free Evotiva works only on localhost. I've downloaded it and tried it at home and it seems to work fine. I've not yet licensed it for use but can't think of a reason not to.

I thought I ran across an alternative somewhere but can't quite remember, and it was pricey or for some other reason I turned back to Evotiva as the route I would probably go. But I have yet to actually do so.

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pmgerholdt

I too use SQL Server Maint. plans as well as a generic file copy process. 

I trust this style of backup much better than other options.

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-Mitchel Sellers
Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider, DNN MVP
CEO/Director of Development - IowaComputerGurus Inc.


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