Backing up complete server

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seawayhandyman
Posts: 2
Joined: 2021/04/18 11:13:32

Backing up complete server

Post by seawayhandyman » 2021/04/18 11:29:34

Good day to you all, hope all of you are safe with what is going on.

I have a few VPS servers using C Panel and CentOS 7. I use for my personal businesses and a few friends’ websites and such.

The host is OVH in Canada and their auto backup or snapshot system use to be good, but when they changed their VPS packages recently, their auto backup system starting to have major issues working well with C panel. Because of that, I am looking for other ways I can back up the complete server if possible. Before, OVH hosting had a system where if the server did not reboot or had issues, I could restore it from up to 14 days before which would reinstall the complete server just like it was when the backup was done and I would not have to do any extra set up or anything as the CentOS 7 was up once again and so was all c panel accounts and such. Now this system does not work like that anymore and even though I have c panel backups which are done, I am in need to have some type of backup for complete server just in case I cannot load it after an update or it crashes and if that happens, I won’t be able to get my backups in c panel either. Sorry for the long description :)

I have some server experience, but I am in no way an expert. If anyone can help me find a simple solution to taking a backup auto or even manually a few times per week on another CentOS 7 server or external drive or some type of cloud system where I can restore if I really need to.

The ideal solution would be to back up the server one or two times per week, and I can manually do this if I need to if no auto system is not available. I have downloaded the sites via c panel, but if server fails, I will need to re install c panel and set up server before I could even think of restoring websites. If there is a way to just restore complete server that would be the best bet.

Thank you all for your help and please again have patience as I am not the most experienced with server management and I am learning all the time.

pjsr2
Posts: 614
Joined: 2014/03/27 20:11:07

Re: Backing up complete server

Post by pjsr2 » 2021/04/19 07:25:45

For my VPS, I use rsync over ssh to copy the data once per day (cron task) to an in-house backup server.
The technique I use to do this passwordless and secure, is taken from https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2014/01/14 ... -to-rsync/

Carefully consider which files may be open and/or in an inconsistent state while you take the backup. For example, when you rsync the open database files of a running database server, chances are that you cannot start the database server from these copied files as their state may be inconsistent. Therefor I have a cron job on the VPS that regularly dumps all databases to file. The rsync-ed copy of these SQL dump files can be used to restore the database in case of.

seawayhandyman
Posts: 2
Joined: 2021/04/18 11:13:32

Re: Backing up complete server

Post by seawayhandyman » 2021/04/19 10:02:58

Ok that makes sense as the database would be corrupted if taken at a live database not a backup.

Just got to figure out how to write a Cron job script for the server and the backup process using rsync.

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