Backups and restore

Each site can be backed up: its files (public, private, logs) and all its databases, with a checksum for every file.

Back up

On the site's page, under Backups:

• Back up now makes a backup at once.
• Schedule: every day or every Sunday, at an hour you choose (in UTC), keeping the last 1 to 30 scheduled backups. Backups you make yourself are never removed automatically.

The site keeps running while it is backed up. If a database has tables that aren't InnoDB, the backup says so: those tables are copied without one consistent snapshot.

Restore

Choose Restore next to a backup. First a safety copy of the site as it is now is made, so you can go back. Then the files and databases are replaced. If anything fails, the site is put back exactly as it was.

For a few seconds during the restore, the site may show new data with old files. A quiet hour is best.

Keep copies elsewhere

These backups are on the same server. If the server is lost (deleted, a failed disk, a lost account), they are lost with it. Also turn on your provider's own server backups (for example DigitalOcean's droplet backups), or keep copies somewhere else.

Where they are

Backups are in /var/backups/whitesmoke/backups, readable by root only, outside every site folder, and never served on the web. Backups made when a site or database is deleted are in /var/backups/whitesmoke/sites and are never deleted automatically.