What to copy besides the database: files, secrets, DNS

The phrase "we have a database backup" calms people right up until the restore. The store comes up without product images, forms stay silent because the mail key lived only on the server, and the domain points nowhere because nobody exported DNS. A copy is a set, not one file.

A minimal set

• The database and uploaded files: products, documents, lead attachments.
• The code or the theme, if they are not in a repository. A repository by itself does not store production.
• Environment variables and integration keys, apart from the public archive.
• DNS records, and which registrar holds the domain and when it expires.
• The list of cron jobs and how the certificate is issued. Otherwise the site returns, and mail and HTTPS do not.

Store it so the site account cannot delete the copy along with itself. And once a quarter the set is worth bringing up on a clean machine, at least to the login page. The date of that restore is more useful than any "backup: OK" status in a panel.

Lexora assembles this set and checks it with a restore. If a copy "exists somewhere" already, we start with what is missing from it, not with selling another disk.