Cloudways allows you to set up a backup schedule for your server. The server backup will back up your application files and databases. In this small article, I am going to explain how the system works in case you had any doubts or concerns.
Scheduling your server backup
Click on the Servers tab from the top of the Cloudways Panel. Then, select your server and head over to the Backups tab in the Server Management area.
There, you will find various options for finetuning and set up the schedule:
Backup frequency
Here you can schedule a backup by selecting the exact time. You can select intervals from 1 Hour up to 7 Days.
Schedule time
Here you set the actual time in which the backup is to be taken. You can set the time in hours and minutes from the dropdown fields.
Backup Retention
Here you can select how long the backups are going to be kept in storage and be available to you for restore. You can select in multiple of one week intervals from 1 week up to 4 weeks.
Local Backups
Usually, a backup will be kept in a remote Amazon bucket storage. If you activate local backups, the backups will also be saved in your local server disk. Please, bear in mind that if you activate that option, the backups WILL count towards your server storage quota.
On-demand backup
On the right side of the panel, you can select to perform an on-demand backup of your server. This type of backup will be available on your server as a downloadable file ready for you to be downloaded through SFTP. The location of that backup would be inside a folder called local_backup at your server’s root folder once you connect to it through SFTP. Note that in order for the on-demand backup to work and for a copy to be stored on your server, you will need to have Local Backups activated from the previous step. If you don’t have the option activated, then the backup will only be taken remotely on the Amazon bucket.
Deleting local backups
In case you have any local backups saved in your server, you can delete them all by enabling the local backup functionality if it is not enabled, hit the SAVE button and then click the trash icon on the right. You can then disable local backups if you wish and hot the SAVE button again.
Restoring from backup
Once backups have been performed they can be restored individually for each application you host on your server. Select your application by clicking Applications from the top, select your Application and click the Restore tab under Application Management.
Just select a backup from the dropdown list and click the RESTORE APPLICATION NOW button underneath.
Conclusion
Backing up and restoring a server is a great practice for peace of mind knowing that your precious files are backed up and ready for recall in case of loss of data. What I like about the Cloudways backup is that it can backup remotely to an Amazon bucket storage and that could be a great thing if you lose access to the backend of your site for some reason. As always, I would suggest that you try the backup and restore process and see if it actually works for you and everything is restored correctly.
Take care and good luck!
If you liked the article and thinking of signing up with Cloudways managed hosting, you can click on my affiliate link and signup.