MITS Cron Database Backups - Back Up, Manage & Restore Your Database

Back up, manage, maintain and synchronize the database of your modified eCommerce Shopsoftware automatically, regularly or manually – directly from the administration area.

With MITS Cron Database Backups, you get much more than a traditional database backup solution. You can automatically back up the shop database via cron job or Scheduled Task, create backups manually when required, manage and restore existing backups, and transfer complete databases or selected tables to other MySQL/MariaDB databases.

In addition, extensive MITS database tools are available for maintenance, cleanup and administrative tasks. This allows many database operations to be performed directly from the administration area without having to execute SQL statements manually via phpMyAdmin or other external tools.

Backup & Restore

• Create automatic and regular database backups via cron job or Scheduled Task.
• Start manual database backups directly from the administration area.
• Create backups as complete SQL files or compressed SQL.GZ files.
• Optional table backup mode with a separate backup file for each database table.
• Select individual tables for manual backups.
• Download existing backups directly from the administration area.
• Restore complete backups or individual tables from table backups.
• Automatically create an additional safety backup before a restore.
• Delete existing backups individually or in bulk.
• Optionally send database backups by email.
• Optionally transfer database backups via FTP to an external backup server.
• Automatically delete old backups after a freely configurable retention period.
• Optionally clean up old LOG files of the types mod_notice, mod_deprecated and mod_strict.

Database Synchronization

The integrated database synchronization allows data from the current shop database to be transferred conveniently to another MySQL or MariaDB database. This makes it possible, for example, to supply development, test, staging, reporting or additional shop databases with up-to-date data.

• Transfer the complete shop database to another database.
• Alternatively, synchronize only selected tables, such as products, descriptions, categories, prices, attributes or other selected data.
• Create any number of synchronization profiles with different target databases and table selections.
• Run any saved synchronization profile manually at any time.
• Perform a one-time manual transfer to a freely specified target database without permanently creating a profile.
• Credentials used for a one-time transfer are not stored permanently.
• Test the connection to the target database before transferring data.
• Configure host, port, socket and optional forced TCP connection individually.
• Optionally require TLS/SSL for external database connections.
• Optionally secure TLS connections using CA certificate and hostname verification.
• Protection against accidentally synchronizing the shop database to itself.
• During a full synchronization, matching target tables are replaced while tables that exist only in the target database remain untouched.
• The internal MITS synchronization management data is never transferred to a target database for security reasons.

Individual Scheduled Tasks for Each Synchronization Profile

An individual Scheduled Task can optionally be created for each synchronization profile. This allows different synchronization targets to be controlled completely independently.

• Define an individual interval for each profile, e.g. every 15 minutes, hourly, daily or weekly.
• Set an individual start or anchor time for each profile.
• Enable or disable each synchronization task separately.
• Edit interval, start time and status directly via the modified Scheduled Tasks function.
• The next and last execution as well as the current status are displayed for each profile.
• Run profiles manually at any time, independently of their schedule.
• Alternatively, due synchronization tasks can be triggered via an external HASH-protected cron job.

This makes different workflows easy to implement: for example, a complete database can be transferred to a backup or staging database every day at 04:00, while selected product, category and attribute tables are synchronized hourly to another database.

Secure Management of Sensitive Credentials

Special attention has been paid to the secure handling of credentials for external databases.

• Stored target passwords of synchronization profiles are encrypted using AES-256-GCM.
• The corresponding random 256-bit key is stored outside the database under includes/local/.
• Temporary credential files are protected using restrictive file permissions and removed again after processing.
• Database passwords are not written to module log files.
• Passwords are not passed to mysql or mysqldump as visible command-line parameters.
• Internal cURL requests can optionally use HTTP Basic Auth credentials, for example for development or staging shops protected by .htaccess.

Database Maintenance & Cleanup

The integrated database tools make it possible to perform numerous frequently required maintenance and cleanup tasks directly from the shop administration area. Critical actions can first be checked using a preview and require additional confirmation.

• Set the next order number or the AUTO_INCREMENT value of orders in a controlled manner.
• Clean up customer accounts by type, age, customer ID or email address.
• When deleting customers, optionally remove their orders including detected order dependencies.
• Remove reviews completely, remove guest reviews only, or clean them up selectively by product.
• Delete orders using various filters or remove them completely.
• Clean up products selectively by status, ID, category, age or missing category assignment.
• Clean up categories including optional subcategories.
• Remove product options and option values completely or only if they are no longer assigned to products.
• Remove product properties and tags completely or only when they are no longer assigned to products.
• Remove manufacturers completely or selectively and optionally detach existing products from the manufacturer.
• Clean up newsletter recipients and optionally associated newsletter history data.
• Search and replace content in selected database areas, e.g. domains, URLs or other text content.
• Expert function for safely swapping two customer/admin accounts including detected customer ID references.
• Optionally reset affected AUTO_INCREMENT values for various cleanup functions.
• Preview destructive actions before actually executing them.

Additional Database Tools for Administrators

• SQL query box for executing individual SQL statements directly from the administration area.
• Convert tables between MyISAM and InnoDB.
• Adjust database character set and collation, e.g. to utf8mb4.
• Select tables individually for backup, restore or conversion.
• Optionally set DB_SERVER_ENGINE and DB_SERVER_CHARSET in the active configure.php.
• If required, configure.php is temporarily made writable and then restored to its previous file mode.
• The backup directory under export/mits_cron_database_backups is automatically protected against direct external access.
• Writing detailed module log files can be enabled or disabled in the system module.
• Synchronization processes can be logged with detailed timings for connection, validation, dump, import and cleanup.

Note: Restore, synchronization, database conversion and cleanup functions directly modify the shop database. They should therefore only be used by administrators who understand the effects of the respective action. A current full backup is generally recommended before critical changes.

Conclusion: MITS Cron Database Backups is therefore not just a solution for automated database backups, but a comprehensive extension for backup, restore, synchronization, maintenance, cleanup and administration of the database of your modified eCommerce Shopsoftware.