Best practice for backup of DA + Server?

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neemama

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Jun 12, 2013
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I am running DA on Debian and wonder what the best practice would be to have everything backed up for the worst case.
I would like to sync everything to my local home server. Possibly via syncthing?

According to the docs (https://docs.directadmin.com/directadmin/backup-restore-migration/backups.html) I could do the following backups:
  • Admin Level -> Admin Backup/Transfer
  • Reseller Level -> Manage User Backups
  • User Level -> Site Backup
  • Admin Level -> System Backup
In my case I probably want:
  • 1. Admin Level -> Admin Backup/Transfer (select all Users)
  • 2. Admin Level -> System Backup (but without /home/ since that is already in the previous backup option)
1. Backup would include users data, websites, domain, sql,... as well as the DA settings.
2. Backup would include the configuration of all the services that DA relies on
Is that correct so far?

The created backup would then have to be synced to my local server (Archlinux).
By using syncthing I would first have to store the whole backup on my web-server and then move it to my local server? That means I need the space on my web-server for a whole backup.
By using the built-in ftp option, I could directly move the backup to my local homeserver without first storing it on my web-server?

Thanks in advance!
 
system backup, You need manual restore by yourself.

Both options, You need some space to compress backup on local server.
 
jamgames2 said:
system backup, You need manual restore by yourself.

Both options, You need some space to compress backup on local server.
Click to expand...

So the Admin Level -> System Backup does include all users/re-sellers and their databases, files, mails, etc?
Basically select everyhing listed in System Backup?

With local server, do you mean the server on which DA is running or the server to which I want to upload the backup to?

Thanks!
 
With local server, do you mean the server on which DA is running or the server to which I want to upload the backup to?
Click to expand...
it's DA Server

If I remember, It include only basic file / Database / DNS, Like
FOLDER: /home/{USER}/




and not include any {*.custom.* } file/folder, Please see in sys-backup list.
If you need any file/folder in sys-backup, just add to list
 
jamgames2 said:
it's DA Server

If I remember, It include only basic file / Database / DNS, Like
FOLDER: /home/{USER}/




and not include any {*.custom.* } file/folder, Please see in sys-backup list.
If you need any file/folder in sys-backup, just add to list
Click to expand...

Any chance to directly download/push files from DA Server to backup server and compress on the backup server?
Because basically I need 50% of total disk space preserved on my DA Server to create & compress a backup.

Another solution could be to basically just mirror /home/ to my backup server since /home/ will most likely contain the biggest parts of data?
Then I create a the admin level -> system-backup for everything else and push the created backup to my backup server?
For mirroring /home/ I could use whatever I want? E.g. syncthing?
 
Yes, please remember it, System Backup not have any tools for restore. Just use tar/extractly any file you want.

Admin Backup: prepare data -> compress -> FTP -> Clean Compress or Not
System Backup: it just tar/zip normally. -> FTP
-

besure exclude /home/tmp when use any tools like rsync, ..etc..

and makesure to use Admin Backup just exclude domains files/folder , This will use for restore in future, when you need it.

this example to use rsync.

Backup system in DA | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base
docs.directadmin.com
 
Last edited:
jamgames2 said:
Yes, please remember it, System Backup not have any tools for restore. Just use tar/extractly any file you want.

Admin Backup: prepare data -> compress -> FTP -> Clean Compress or Not
System Backup: it just tar/zip normally. -> FTP
-

besure exclude /home/tmp when use any tools like rsync, ..etc..

and makesure to use Admin Backup just exclude domains files/folder , This will use for restore in future, when you need it.

this example to use rsync.

Backup system in DA | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base
docs.directadmin.com
Click to expand...

Thank you james!

So I will weekly sync /home/ (via rsync / syncthing / whatever) to my backup server (I will exclude /home/tmp/)
I will create weekly admin backups (exclude /home/ and de-select domains files/folders).

If I ever have a hardware failure I will restore the admin backup and then push back /home/ from backup server to DA server.

Sounds easy peasy! :)
 
Just a quick follow up question.

My server is hosted at "hetzner" with 2x 256GB SSD in raid.
I thought I would now add a 1 TB storage box from hetzner (https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box) which can be connected as network drive to my server.

I was hoping that with this way I would not have to reserve any free space on my 256GB SSD for the backup as it will be created/compressed directly on the storage box which is mounted as network drive. Does that work?
 
it should work. Because "Admin Backup / System Backup" have option to set target storage path. default will be "/home/admin/admin_backups"

Example: your 1TB mount point at "/backup_storage" Directory, if you want to work with admin_backups. you need to create "admin" folder like

base permission should same with "/home" and "/home/admin"
Code: 
chown root:root /backup_storage
chmod 0711 /backup_storage

mkdir /backup_storage/admin
chown admin:admin /backup_storage/admin
chmod 0711 /backup_storage/admin

you can found out default secure permission for folder by
Code: 
stat /home
stat /home/admin
 
Well I did this setup now and I think this should cover anything to get me back after e.g. a harddrive failure?

Admin Tools -> Admin Backup
  • Cronjob to run every Thursday 3am
  • All Users
  • All data selected except "Domains Directory"
  • Save to /home/admin/admin_backups/
Admin Tools -> System Backup
  • Cronjob to run every Thursday 1am
  • Backup HTTPD, DNS, MySQL, Custom Directory & Files
  • Directories - all selected except /home/admin/
  • Files - all selected
  • Save to /home/admin/admin_backups/
Syncthing
  • Cron job to run a one-time-sync to my home server
  • Whole /home/ will be copied/synced over to my home server
  • This includes the above backups as they are stored in /home/admin/admin_backups/

Any more suggestions? :) Thanks!
 
I highly recommend staying away from Hetzner StorageBox.
Without warning, when my payment didn’t go through and although I paid it immediately within seconds of receiving their notification, they had already cancelled my account and purged all my data. And their message said they would seek legal action to recover any moneys owed, which there were none.
No prior warning, no grace period, nothing.
All my backup data is lost forever.
These people should not be in business.
 
naguibihelek said:
No prior warning, no grace period, nothing.
Click to expand...
We are doing business with Hetzner for many years. One friend of mine also does not pay Hetzner on time sometimes. He always gets 2 warnings. One like 7 days in front and one 24 hours before, with the warning that account will be cancelled at a certain time.
That is with servers, we don't have a storagebox from them.

And I use another server for backup and sometimes a NAS at home.
 
Richard G said:
We are doing business with Hetzner for many years. One friend of mine also does not pay Hetzner on time sometimes. He always gets 2 warnings. One like 7 days in front and one 24 hours before, with the warning that account will be cancelled at a certain time.
That is with servers, we don't have a storagebox from them.

And I use another server for backup and sometimes a NAS at home.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing Richard,
But there was no warning. no 7 day reminder. Nothing. Just an immediate termination and threat.
Just the threat was bad enough. Not sure how you do business with them. I suggest you be very careful.
We had just finished the trial period and this was the first payment.
I had immediately logged into my account and made the payment, and checked the data was safe.
But their process did not correct the situation and continued to destroy our data.
I do have other backups in place, but was just infuriated by their response and no admission of a mistake. No effort to whatsoever to deal with the situation, and blaming me.
 
naguibihelek said:
Just the threat was bad enough. Not sure how you do business with them. I suggest you be very careful.
Click to expand...
We had same experience with OVH after 7 years of using 400$/mo server they just marked our server as hacked and rebooted to rescue, when we ask them for details - they told that there wasn't hack, that server was rebooted from our side and booted to rescue because we don't switch it to boot from HDD. We send them screens of OVH notifications about hacking, they told it was some mistake. Ok, we rebooted to normal. All work 15 minutes and all repeats, we ask them again, and they told we forgot to switch to normal boot, we rebooted again to normal boot. It repeats 4 times, then they dropped us from billing cabinet and send us abuse that they disabled server due to copyright abuse, started server to ftp-rescue (where raid partitions wasn't mounted) and give us 7 days to take data away as they dropped us as a client and will destroy server. Without billing cabinet they don't want to receive our emails, support didn't react to our answers to their tickets, so without raid - no data with ftp-rescue. Good that we have 2 backups at 2 another DCs. At 4 hours we restored all 1,5tb on new server on another DC and don't want to have any business with OVH. The worst service and communications!
 
naguibihelek said:
We had just finished the trial period and this was the first payment.
Click to expand...
Maybe that had something to do with it, because there is a lot of abuse, they might drop things faster on new customers. I'm not sure about that. However, you should have had a fair warning, I totally agree with that.

As sais we are doing business with them for more than a decade, no problems at all.
Maybe your payment and the cron just overlapped, automated systems can go wrong sometimes. However, you should have gotten a reminder earlier, totally agree with that.
So I can understand your frustration about it. I surely hope this will not happen again. But mainly/avarage (I don't know the correct word in English) they are not a bad company.
Such things rarely happen with Hetzner, mostly they are good. Zhenyapan also has systems with them, as do others.

As for OVH, I totally agree with you. We were very unsatified with OVH's services (rather non services) too.
 
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