Backup multiple Plesk servers to one [solved]

[FranckTAG]

Hi,

we have 5 dedicated servers.
We currently backup them every night locally (each server is backed up to himself), which is a problem if the server completly fails.

We want to backup all 5 servers to a 6th server dedicated only to backups.
We have 1 main goal, and 1 secondary goal:
- be able to restore any website to whatever server
- secondary goal: ideally we'd like to keep the local backups too, with a longer retention time
I don't want to mess with our data, so I ask here before.

This 6th server can have Plesk too if needed.

--> is it possible to backup several servers onto one ? Something special must be done ?
--> is it possible to have 2 different backup policies per server ? One policy for local backups, and one for remote backups.
--> should I use the FTP backup provided into Plesk, or the "native" one ?

 

[pleskpanel]

While Plesk currently only supports one server backup rule via the GUI (not sure why it's so behind the curve), please consider voting for multiple rules at http://plesk.uservoice.com/forums/1...3703858-multiple-backup-rules-or-more-options.

To answer your questions:

1. You can backup several servers onto one (you could do this via the GUI using separate FTP accounts on the backup server or via a cron job using the Plesk backup command line option) and you'll maybe want to space out your backups over several hours to avoid running into bandwidth or resource issues on your backup server (depending on its resources)
2. See the opening note regarding backup rules
3. Not sure what you mean by FTP backup provided by plesk but for now you'll probably want to leave your local server backups in place and run a second backup using the Plesk backup manager command line cron approach (it's not too bad once you get it started) which would make your cron look like this: "/usr/local/psa/bin/pleskbackup server --split=2G --only-hosting --skip-logs --prefix="weekly" --ftp-passive-mode --output-file=ftp://yourbackuplocation.com/optionaldirectory/ --ftp-login=username --ftp-password=password"

You might want to create five different FTP accounts on your remote server for each of your servers (with different passwords) for isolation and you'll need a cron job that will automatically clean up older backups on the backup server.

Please reply back with your results!

 

[pleskpanel]

PS: The approach above assumes that you don't care about backing up logs, that you only need websites/databases (but no email) and it splits it into 2G archives so you can modify as you see fit using the fun read at http://download1.parallels.com/Plesk/Doc/en-US/online/plesk-win-advanced-administration-guide/

 

[pleskpanel]

PPS: VOTE for multiple backup rules! It's very unfortunate that everyone has to come up with their own home-brew solutions to get around this.

 

[FranckTAG]

Many (many) thanks for your answer.
So okay, I will now try.

- I will create 5 ftp accounts (it was my initial intention, but my english is not very good so I tried to be more simple)
- I will shift backups times to save resources (it was my initial intention too)

Not sure what you mean by FTP backup provided by plesk!

I mean the fact to check the ftp box. Last time I used it (years ago) I wasn't able to restore anything.

you'll probably want to leave your local server backups in place and run a second backup using the Plesk backup manager command line cron approach

So I can have as many backup I want, but they all share the same retention parameter ? (unless I run a home made cleanup scripts)
Thanks for the doc pointer. I struggle to find reliable informations, so I currently only use basic features.


PS: of course I voted This is a really-needed feature