Database Cloning

[Meliodas1942]

   Hello all, I am writing this as a new forum poster who is looking for some help in creating a back up of my businesses server database. I will explain what I am looking to do, and am open to any suggestions as to how to achieve this goal. The business I work for has recently started using a swipe card payment system, we have three locations less than a mile apart, each with their own servers running a virtual machine and a back up server.

 

   At our main location there is an additional set of servers which handles the communication between all three locations, the system is not proprietary software, and the company is fairly open to tweaking of things to make the customer happy. With that being said the company is also fairly incompetent in their serviceability, and I often find myself fixing things which otherwise would take hours of waiting and going in circles to accomplish. The goal I have is to set up a system in which we can have a back up of our database or really just a single hard drive being used for the database (Each server has two drives, one for the OS & one for the database). I am very familiar with building rigs, and am very capable at setting up any system I may have to, I am looking for the best solution.

 

   My boss is well a boss and he is cheap, and has no clue when it comes to computer components and the cost of server grade hardware, and nas systems. I also do not have any knowledge on utilizing RAID, NAS systems, or anything which will most likely be the answer. I appreciate any assistance in this matter, and would like to add that if there is a solution which could be remoted into that would be ideal, and please don't destroy me for being a noob in this matter. 

 

                                                                                              

[Salv8 (sam)]

database management is painful, first off does your database software support syncing to other servers

SQL has the ability to use multiple servers (called nodes i think) to work together in providing a single database that can still run even if a node or two go down.

if your database software doesn't support this feature (or something similar) then you might need to switch to another database solution that does have it

thats the limit of my database knowledge, others like @leadeater know more about it and can guide you better than i can and help you with it.

hope this helps man

[Meliodas1942]

   To be honest, it is not essential to have anything other than a direct copy of everything that is being put on the drive allocated to the database. My knowledge base is limited on the database, as the company uses a remote manager software to make any changes that I have access to. What is essential is the copy and the use is for us to have someone we know write a program that allows us to have information from the database that we currently can not get from the company.

   The data we are trying to access is for reporting purposes that the company simply doesn't have a filtering system to offer, and is tailored towards the use of the swipe card system solely. Being a cash and card business every report we receive is essentially incorrect as it does not take cash into consideration even though it monitors such. With my lack of knowledge and to put it simply, we want a back up of whatever goes on the servers drive so that we can have a programmer friend try and access the data and pull out what we are looking for, or even to simply separate it between cash and card accordingly. I do know that it runs off of MySQL and FileZilla, which from what our programmer friend told us, is relatively easy to access and being on local machines should not be a problem to do. What I am looking for is a cheap way to test this theory and take it out of my hands if possible, while also being a viable option to implement if it works. The other reason we would like this done off of the host computer is because it is our right to have a back up, but don't want to cross any license and support issues from the card system company.

   

To put this in perspective we have had this system for three years, and have done nothing but compromise, as they haven't fixed a single real issue since we have operated with it, and every goal we have set of which they promised was possible (Sales people ; ; ) has been through compromise or taking our own approach on the matter. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Meliodas1942 said:

I do know that it runs off of MySQL and FileZilla, which from what our programmer friend told us, is relatively easy to access and being on local machines should not be a problem to do. What I am looking for is a cheap way to test this theory and take it out of my hands if possible, while also being a viable option to implement if it works. The other reason we would like this done off of the host computer is because it is our right to have a back up, but don't want to cross any license and support issues from the card system company.

Without knowing what the license restrictions might be generally speaking this applies mostly to the application itself more than the database. If the application and database are running on hardware owned by the company then you have as much freedom as allowed in the license agreement, I've never encountered a software vendor that has objected to using a secondary copy of the database for reporting as long as that is only what it is used for.

 

There should be backups of the database located somewhere so all you would need to do is setup an automated task that runs daily, or more often as required but then so would the backups, that restores the database backup to another computer running MySQL.

 

The other option is to setup MySQL replication to another server so you can have the data in real time.

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/replication.html