In this little piece I am going to highlight some reasons of why backups may fail.
While many of the reasons below are common and apply to a wide range of different backup methods, I am specifically assuming you are using a backup service like simplebackups.com to back up your servers and databases.
Server-related causes:
- Not enough disk space
- Server runs out of memory
- Server has been placed behind a firewall and cannot be accessed
- The backup is taking too long to be created and eventually times out
- Trying to back up a non-existent directory or one that has been deleted
- Trying to back up a directory which you don’t have permissions to read
- Invalid/changed server credentials (host, port, username, ssh key, or password)
Storage-related causes:
- A problem uploading backup to remote storage
- Invalid/changed storage credentials (key, secret, region, or bucket)
Database-related causes:
- Trying to back up an empty database
- Invalid/changed database credentials (db host, db port, db username, db password, or db name)