Are you running redundant database and web servers? You’re covered in case of a disk failure, etc., right? But what about a fire in your web-hosting facility? Or some maniacal sysadmin with a hacksaw? Suppose you lose *all* your servers? Off-site storage, right? Are you doing that daily and for all your files?

Here at The Conversations Network we’ve got a great automated solution. I wrote an rsync-style utility that copies any new/modified files in a directory tree to Amazon’s AWS S3 every night. I included a 7-day rotating copy of our databases, too. The cost is running a whopping $16 per month. Yes, you read that right: $16. That includes about 65GB of data supporting the more than 1,600 programs we’ve produced or that are in production including the MP2 originals and MP3 distribution copies.