Running out of disk space...

Umm, either find something to delete or upgrade your package which gets you more ram, more transfer & more space?

You might also be able to move some of your data (e.g. a big photo collection) to something like Amazon S3.

The size is coming from DB size and DB backups.

Do I try to put my DB on a separate linode instance?

@arachn1d:

The size is coming from DB size and DB backups.

Do I try to put my DB on a separate linode instance?
Or you can just upgrade your Linode. It doesn't save you any money to run two smaller Linodes, you know…

Also, old DB backups should be moved somewhere else. It doesn't make any sense to keep both the DB and the backups in the same server, except temporarily while you're producing the backup. As soon as the backup file has been produced, it should be shipped off to somewhere else.

I would recommend moving the backups to Amazon S3. There are plenty of scripts that you can use to produce daily backups of your DB, upload it to S3, and delete the backup after it has been safely uploaded to S3.

Plus, it doesn't make much sense to keep extremely old backups. It's good to have several backups so in case something fails because of a corrupt database, you can restore one backup at a time starting with the most recent until it works. It's also good to have them in case you get hack because some exploits are done through SQL. But it doesn't make much sense to go back more than a month (two at most, but even that is overkill) since the most recent changes to your database will have happened within the past few weeks.

Personally, I wouldn't trust someone else's servers with my sensitive data, though, and anybody who hacks Amazon's servers (or any snooping Amazon employee) will be able to find your backups and do a sql exploit, which will then go to your server's live database if you need to restore. It is good to move the backups off of your Linode to save space, but I'd recommend keeping them on a flash drive or CD-RW at home, and keep an extra copy with a friend or two you know you can trust (preferrably somebody who's not technologically advance enough to figure out how to modify the sql) just in case something happens to your copy.

@Piki:

Plus, it doesn't make much sense to keep extremely old backups. It's good to have several backups so in case something fails because of a corrupt database, you can restore one backup at a time starting with the most recent until it works. It's also good to have them in case you get hack because some exploits are done through SQL. But it doesn't make much sense to go back more than a month (two at most, but even that is overkill) since the most recent changes to your database will have happened within the past few weeks.

Personally, I wouldn't trust someone else's servers with my sensitive data, though, and anybody who hacks Amazon's servers (or any snooping Amazon employee) will be able to find your backups and do a sql exploit, which will then go to your server's live database if you need to restore. It is good to move the backups off of your Linode to save space, but I'd recommend keeping them on a flash drive or CD-RW at home, and keep an extra copy with a friend or two you know you can trust (preferrably somebody who's not technologically advance enough to figure out how to modify the sql) just in case something happens to your copy.

If you're worried about someone stealing your data from S3, just encrypt before uploading. You could pipe your backup generator through gpg, for example.

@bdonlan:

If you're worried about someone stealing your data from S3, just encrypt before uploading. You could pipe your backup generator through gpg, for example.

True, but I find it much easier to just drop them in my Linode's home directory and then scp them to my flash drive every week when I turn on the laptop. For those who have a desktop, cron can be used to automatically rsync the backup to either a flash drive or the hard disk of the desktop and then burn an extra copy to a CD-RW. It would also be possible to have cron rsync or scp the backup to a friend's computer if they'll let you, or send it to their computer via VPN (provided you have one setup).

Plus, using Amazon S3 adds the extra step of having to register an account and do whatever other setup is needed (I wouldn't know, I didn't know it existed until I read this thread).