Backup Solution: rsnapshot or pleskbackup?

[zooming]

rdiff-backup is also interesting.

It's not integrated to Plesk, etc, but it really have nice features.

http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/

 

[assimovt]

I've got rsnapshot all set up and it's creating the backups like a charm. I'm going to agree with MikePaul99 here that this is probably a better solution than pleskbackup. It's extremely easy to set up and once you have it configured it's totally hands off. Here's a quick how-to to get you up and running.

1. First download the rsnapshot program to your server and install: http://www.rsnapshot.org/downloads.html
I used the RPM version.

2. Once you have rsnapshot installed edit the config file: /etc/rsnapshot.conf
I only had to edit two sections of the conf file.
The first part tells rsnapshot where to store the backups. In my case /backups/ is the path to a second harddrive.

###########################
# SNAPSHOT ROOT DIRECTORY #
###########################

# All snapshots will be stored under this root directory.
#
snapshot_root   /backup/.snapshots/

Then further down towards the end of the file we add the directories we want backed up. I'm backing up the following directories: home, etc, usr, var, root, boot

# LOCALHOST
backup  /home/	localhost/
backup  /etc/	localhost/
backup  /usr/   localhost/
backup  /var/   localhost/
backup  /root/  localhost/
backup  /boot/  localhost/

That's it for configuration! Just make sure the syntax is right with this command:

rsnapshot configtest


3. Now to automate everything add the following two cron jobs to the root crontab:

0 */4 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly

30 23 * * * /usr/bin/rsnapshot daily

This runs the hourly backup every 4 hours and runs the daily backup each day at 11:30PM.

*note: the path to rsnapshot on my system is /usr/bin/rsnapshot, this may differ depending on how you installed it. Make sure your cron job has the correct path to rsnapshot.

All done. Now your system is being backed up every 4 hours. This is a very basic usage of rsnapshot, but there are many more options in the config file. You can read the complete how-to here: http://rsnapshot.org/howto/1.2/rsnapshot-HOWTO.en.html

Brian

Your guide was good one. You might be interested to check http://www.technetra.com/writings/archive/2005/08/20/backups-are-a-snap-with-rsnapshot

Here is my list of folders to backup. What do u think?

# Apache and Plesk services
/etc/

# Users home directories
/home/

# Plesk tree, RoundCube and other custom installations
/usr/local/

# Trac, Rails and other custom installations
/usr/share/

# FTP uploads
/var/ftp/

# Mailman arhives and lists
/var/lib/mailman/

# MySQL dumps taken by Plesk
/var/lib/psa/dumps/

# Emails
/var/qmail/

# Web sites
/var/www/vhosts/

 

[lvalics]

Just one quick note. Whatever you backup, I did not saw anyone to restore 100% if an OS fail. Usually when an OS fail, for whatever reason (hacked, libraries, etc) datacenter restore new OS (latest usually) and new PLESK. So the only way to restore in many cases, is to redo all by hand, 1 by 1.
We are in work to finish a PLESK Crash Recovery tool, we hope will be done in 1-2 weeks (all tests was positive) and then to offer this as a service to anyone who get a crash.
So backup in ANY case, what we recommend:
/var/lib/mysql
/var/qmail/
/etc/
/var/ww/vhosts/ (or where it is)
also we use automysqlbackup.sh http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/ to create daily backup of database and also we have our own backup script (http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?p=195911) and seems work ok.

Hope this help.

 

[eddie69]

How about 4psa Total Backups

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with 4psa Total Backup?

http://www.4psa.com/index.php?pcat=products&pag=4psatbackup

Thanks,
eddie