TOPS Internet Backup Service

Why You need to Choose a Scheme

The TOPS Internet Backup Service allows you to protect yourself as much, or as little as you need. The Backup Estimator can help you calculate exactly how much space you will need to perform one backup; however, even if you have additional offline backups, one backup may not sufficiently address your needs.

For example, if you perform a daily backup at 3pm, and you realize at 4pm that you made a mistake yesterday, you will not be able to recover yesterday's backup since today's backup has already been performed, and you are only maintaining one backup instance. This is why choosing a backup scheme is so important. Backup schemes allow you to set how many and what kind of backups you wish to maintain.

Determining Backup Costs

First, follow these instructions to run the Backup Estimator to determine the size of a single backup of your communities. Next, select a predefined scheme from the list below, or come up with your own. Add up how many backups total are required for your selected scheme (Suggested Scheme is 10 backups). Multiply the total number of scheme files by the total amount given by the Backup Estimator. The resultant number is the exact number of megabytes of server space that you will require to backup your data for a full cycle (one year). Assume a small margin for growing data file and select the backup size you need.

Backup Types

The TOPS Internet Backup Service provides you with a number of predefined backup schemes to accommodate your every backup need. Backup schemes consist of a number of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups. If you do not wish to use a predefined scheme, you may choose to create your own custom scheme. There are four types of backups: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly.

• Daily - A daily backup is performed every day. Tuesday's backup overwrites Monday's, Wednesday's backup overwrites Tuesday's, and so on.
• Weekly - A weekly backup is performed once a week, initiating the first time you perform a backup. Therefore, if you perform your initial backup on a Tuesday, all subsequent weekly backups will be performed on Tuesdays.
• Monthly - A monthly backup is performed once per month, initiating on the day of the month that you perform the first backup. Therefore, if you perform your initial backup on the 10th, all subsequent monthly backups will be performed on the 10th.
• Yearly - A yearly backup is performed once per year. Yearly backups are the only types that may be marked as permanent. This allows you to maintain yearly backups for your records, indefinately. If you do check the "Yearly Backups are Permanent" option, new yearly backups will NOT overwrite old backups. However, this means that you will need to adjust the size of your account settings each year to accommodate the permanent files.

Backup Schemes

Following is an explanation of the available predefined schemes: