Backup Management and Restoration at CrowdHandler

CrowdHandler has comprehensive backup policies in place to protect against data loss and ensure the ability to recover from system or application disruptions. Our backup and restore procedures include:

Database Backups

Our MySQL RDS databases utilize:

  • Hourly snapshots - Snapshots are copies of the database at a point in time. We retain hourly snapshots for 30 days in case of accidental data loss or corruption. Snapshots are encrypted and replicated to a separate region.
  • Daily dumps - We perform nightly logical database dumps which are then compressed and encrypted before being stored in Amazon S3. Dumps are retained for 60 days and provide an additional layer of backup beyond snapshots.

File and Object Storage

All digital assets are stored in Amazon S3 with:

  • Versioning - Enabled to retain deleted objects, protecting against accidental or malicious deletion.
  • Replication - All S3 buckets are replicated to a separate AWS region for redundancy.
  • Object Lifecycle Management - We define policies to determine how long objects in S3 are retained before being archived or deleted. Lifecycles can be configured per object prefix.

Restoration Testing

We conduct regular restoration testing to verify we are able to recover data and systems from backups. Testing includes:

  1. Restoring copies of production databases from snapshots to validate data integrity and query functionality.
  2. Restoring portions of S3 data from versioned objects or archives to confirm files are intact and accessible.
  3. Simulating scenarios like accidental environment deletions or database drops and demonstrating we can restore service using available backups.
  4. Documenting and reviewing the results of each restoration test to identify any issues, necessary improvements and updates to internal procedures.

CrowdHandler's backup management policies and routine restoration testing provide confidence in our ability to recover from disruptions or outages while protecting against permanent data loss. Backups of databases, object storage, infrastructure components and more ensure we can restore services even in the event of failures at multiple levels. Regular validation of our backup and recovery processes aim to guarantee data integrity and maximize uptime.