Why backups?
"Nobody needs backups." Are you sure?
Have you ever accidentally deleted an email, a database or an image from your website? Maybe you've installed an extension or made an update that didn't work?
Not only in these cases it is good to have a backup over a longer period of time and to be able to perform a restore.
A hacker attack on your website. Upon analysis, it turns out that the changes were made several days ago. Cleaning up and repairing the website would take a lot of time. Now it is good if you have access to a backup that was created, for example, 12 days ago and that may still be clean.
Import the backup, close the security hole and the site is up and running again without much effort.
Why should you configure and manage the backups yourself?
- You have the possibility to define the period for the backups, depending on whether you are more the type "cheap hosting" or "I want to be as safe as possible". Configure the Backup Manager to suit your needs and the storage space of your hosting package.
- You have an overview of the available backups.
- You can import the backup at any time, even at night, you don't have to place a chargeable restore order and you don't have to wait for us.
But, isn't creating backups very time-consuming?
Set up backups
In your customer menu (Plesk) you will find, directly after login, under "Websites & Domains", the entry "Backup and Restore". Look on the right side in the side menu.
When setting up your package, we already activate the backup manager for you, so that you have a backup in your package from the first day on.
So that you can access backups of the last 14 days, as in our previous Classic Hosting, we'll set you up with a 2-weekly backup with daily incremental backups.
What functions does the backup manager have
- You can create a backup manually, for example before you make a change to your website. To do this, click on the "Create backup" button.
- Using the green arrows you can download individual backup files to your local computer. This way you can archive them for a longer period of time, for example on DVD or Blu-ray.
- With the "Upload" button, you can then also back up such a backup.
- With "Remove" you can delete individual or all backups.
- Under "Schedule" you will find the settings for automatic backups.
- A possibility to store the backups directly on an external storage can be found under "Settings for remote storage".
Create backup
Here you can specify in detail what you want to backup.
The choices under "Backup Content" are self-explanatory.
Notes on the "Backup settings
In order for the backup to be DSGVO-compliant, you should refrain from backing up the log files. This is especially important for long-term archiving. Therefore, activate "Exclude log files".
So that files from a move from Classic to Cloud Hosting are not backed up as well, you don't need a backup of the backups and temporary files don't need to be backed up, you should "Exclude certain files from backup".
httpdocs/__transfer/* httpdocs/typo3cms/system/backup/databases/* httpdocs/typo3cms/system/backup/files/* .cagefs/tmp/*
If you don't want to wait in front of the computer for the backup to complete, get notified by e-mail.
Schedule automatic backups
Since we already activate the automatic backups for you when setting up the package, the most important settings are already made.
Of course, you can adjust the values yourself.
- The option "Use incremental backup" is active to save disk space, because a full backup is not necessary every day.
- The execution time is usually between 0:00 and 06:00 and is individually preset by us in each package, so that not all backups run at the same time.
- However, from our experience as a hoster, we recommend not to go below 2 weeks for the time period (Weekly "2").
- To reduce the size of the backups, certain directories or files can be excluded from the backup. We have already added a few default directories that are not mandatory.
- You should be notified about errors, not that the backups don't work for days and then you have no backup in case of emergency.
The option "Exclude log files" is active, as these should not be included in a backup due to the DSGVO.
Import backup (restore)
A backup can be easily imported via the backup manager. In this example, we show you how to restore data from a TYPO3 installation.
To ensure that all files are restored from the backup, you must first rename the directory that you want to restore. No files will be overwritten by the restore, e.g. no 0 byte files.
Tips
The other points work in the same way as the "Files of domains" shown.
In a CMS, the folders and files of the website naturally also include the database. You must read this from the configuration file and then restore it.
For "Websites", please note that the files, databases and email inboxes of a domain are restored here. This means that emails that have already been deleted will be restored to your mailboxes.