Self-hosted tracker backup — the recovery-ready SOP

Self-hosted tracker backup — the recovery-ready SOP

A self-hosted Keitaro instance holds every click, conversion, and postback you have. Lose it without backups and you lose your business memory. Build the backup as a tested procedure, not a cron job you never check.

— Back up the database daily, automated, to off-server storage. A backup on the same server dies with the server.
— Back up the tracker configuration and any custom landers separately from the database. Restoring data into a misconfigured tracker still leaves you broken.
— Encrypt backups at rest. They contain click-ids, IPs, and conversion data you are responsible for.
— Set retention: keep daily backups for 30 days so you can roll back past a corruption you did not notice immediately.
— Test the restore. Quarterly, restore the latest backup to a staging instance and confirm it boots and queries. An untested backup is a hope, not a backup.
— Document the restore steps. The procedure must be runnable by someone who is not you, under pressure, at 3 a.m.

Validation:
— Confirm the last automated backup timestamp is within 24 hours.
— Confirm the last successful test restore is within 90 days.

A tracker with no tested restore is a single point of total failure.

Save this SOP. Verify your backups before they matter.