VaultPress and WordPress backups

VaultPress is in interesting WordPress plugin/service.  You install a plugin and then their services offers the following features:

• Automatic backup of your content that is hosted in WordPress


• Automatic patching of your WordPress install

I think that the automatic backup of content is interesting, especially since the backup happens as soon as you add content.  I am not sure about the automatic patching of the WordPress installation.  I would be concerned about the plugin patching the WordPress installation to one that has a problem, without my knowledge.  For example, WordPress 2.9 had a problem with certain version of the curl library in PHP, and the 2.9.1 version fixed it.  When performing the patch manually, you have the opportunity to make sure that there aren't any reported problems.

Also, I am interested in seeing how a restore would work with this plugin.  For example, if my database got corrupt, how would I restore.  Also, how many previous revisions are kept in the backup.  Since they are saving any change made in the WordPress installation to the backup, this could also mean that any accidental/malicious deletion would also be automatically propagated.

Currently, I am just using the WordPress Database Backup plugin, and just having it email me the dumps of the database tables.  If I need to restore, I would just need to restore the database from the backup that I want.  The things that are not being backed-up in this process are any uploaded photos or the installation itself, but that is covered my my hosting provider.

[via Matt Cutts]