Backup and Restore

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#1 Wed, 09/09/2009 - 17:57
pablofm

Backup and Restore

Hi there,

I see that there is an option in the Account Plans settings that says "Backup and Restore".

What is this for? Is there a simple way to backup virtual systems to a backup server from within Cloudmin and then restore it? Can you please address this issue? How does one do backups?

Thanks!

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 20:32
andreychek

[deleting initial text, as I clearly didn't read the post well enough]

Looking into the backup functions, I think I'm going to let Jamie answer that one. I'll pass the message along to him!

-Eric

Wed, 09/09/2009 - 20:35
pablofm

Hi Eric, I am referring to cloudmin. Not virtualmin. Sorry for the confusion. Should I be using a different forum?

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 00:19
JamieCameron

The backup function in Cloudmin 3.0 and later is design to backup one or more virtual systems so that their filesystems can be restored if they get wiped out by an rm -rf / or something.

You can setup backups on schedule, or trigger them on demand. The destination can be any remote FTP or SSH server, or another system managed by Cloudmin so that you can have a central backup destination.

Check under the Backup and Restore category on the left menu for all the backup functions..

''

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 15:48
pablofm

OK, that makes sense. I guess what confuses me is: How self service is the backup and recover setup?

Does each account owner have access to their own backup and restore? Can they manage their own backup schedule each of their managed systems and also recover from backup? Or are backups a root user thing? I am curious how you have visualized this...

By the way, I am a huge fan of your work. Right now, I am kind of bumbling around since the docs are frankly a little hard to understand. I really appreciate the help getting me up to speed. Thanks.

Thu, 09/10/2009 - 15:55 (Reply to #5)
JamieCameron

Yes, the backups can be self-service .. you can limit at the plan level how much disk space each owner can use for backups, and give them the ability to make and restore their own backups.

The best way to set this up is as follows :

1) Pick a machine that you will use for storing backups, ideally on the same network as your Xen host systems and with plenty of space. Alternately, you can choose to store backups on the host system(s) themselves.

2) Go to Host Systems -> Xen Host Systems -> some-host, and enter that location in the "Default backup destination" section. Do this for each of your hosts.

3) Go to Cloudmin Settings -> Account Plans, and check the "Backup and restore systems" box under "Allowed actions for system owners". Also, enter some amount of disk space in the "Maximum space for backups" field. Then click Save.

System owners should now have access to the backup and restore features.

''

Mon, 09/14/2009 - 09:52 (Reply to #6)
pcardoso

Each time the backup runs, it overwrites the older backup witch makes it not very useful. Can't we define the max number of days for backup and have the backup files with date information in it's name? That would be a great feature.

Best Regards Paulo Cardoso

Mon, 09/14/2009 - 12:03 (Reply to #7)
JamieCameron

That's a good idea, and is on my TODO list. I want to support date-based backups with purging, like Virtualmin does.

Until then, you could create multiple backup schedules for the same systems, each of which runs on a different day of the week and each of which goes to a different destination..

''

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 06:02 (Reply to #8)
pcardoso

Great!.

I will do that. Thanks.

Just one more question. What if we need just to restore some files from a backup? Any idea on how to mount a backup in a separete folder? Like /mnt/oldbackup

Tue, 09/15/2009 - 11:53 (Reply to #9)
JamieCameron

The simplest way is to find the backup you want to restore on the Backup Logs page, then click on it to restore. This assumes that it is still at the original location though..

''

Fri, 09/18/2009 - 12:35 (Reply to #10)
pcardoso

Yes but the problem is that it will over-wright any file on the server. It would be great if we could open a backup (mount it on /mnt/backup) and then we could copy any file we want to recover.

Fri, 09/18/2009 - 12:37 (Reply to #11)
JamieCameron

Do you mean being able to do a partial restore of just some files from the backed-up system's filesystem?

''

Sun, 09/20/2009 - 13:54 (Reply to #12)
pcardoso

Yes, that's it.

How can this be done?

Sun, 09/20/2009 - 22:41 (Reply to #13)
JamieCameron

At the moment, there is no built-in way to do this. However, you may be able to do it manually if needed, depending on the VPS type you are backing up (OpenVZ, Xen or something else).

''

Thu, 01/14/2010 - 08:03
SoftDux

JamieCameron,

Do you have plans to allow us, or the VPS owner / client todo partial restores to selected files only?

Thu, 01/14/2010 - 12:20 (Reply to #15)
JamieCameron

This could be done, but it isn't on my list of future features yet ..

''

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