Can Backup Manager Support Differential Backups?

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info
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Our full (automated) backup is quite large, but it's mostly e-mail, where some accounts are fairly idle. Currently backup is pretty much all or nothing, and we're limited to 2 backups (daily or otherwise). Ideally, I'd want to have a weekly full backup with daily differentials, which would make much better use of the backup storage space, and allow more backups to be saved.

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Satisfaction mark by info 4 years ago

Actually, it's the e-mail that's important here. And moving to another account or product is not really helpful advice, as we are paying for an automatic backup feature, that in practice is not really very useful: According to the docs, it only keeps the last TWO backups, regardless of storage space available.Again, differential backups would be both more efficient use of server storage and resources, and allow more useful backups, covering a longer period of time.Right now, we'd be better off manually downloading the full backup ourselves every day...

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anonymous
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Hi, info! If you're referring to the backups made with cPanel's Backup Manager, you're going to be a bit limited as the nature of the software favors streamlining/'set it and forget it' over granular configuration. If you're on a VPS or Reseller account, there are some more options available at the WHM level that may be of help to you. One thing you may want to try is setting the 'default' backup to exclude email, then manually create full cPanel account backups on a weekly basis that include email (and everything else).


My personal choice, if I were in this situation, would be to configure the Backup Manager to backup everything except emails/other backups, manually perform a cPanel backup on a weekly basis covering the entire account, and then adding a backup solution to the website itself-- if it's a WordPress site, something like our BoldGrid Total Upkeep could easily be configured to create the daily backups you're discussing-- and store them externally on something like a GDrive or AWS S3! As long as you're careful not to 'backup the backups' and create a spiral of ever-growing backups that cause you to run out of disk space, strategic use of multiple backup solutions is probably going to get what you're looking for with a minimal amount of fuss. 


The benefit here is that the Backup Manager lets you restore individual files/folders easily, the WordPress/other site plugins let you carefully configure exactly what is most important for a given site, and then you have weekly full account backups (ideally downloaded and stored somewhere secure) as a fallback in case something unusual happens. 

Side note: if you do use Total Upkeep, just remember to use your BoldGrid Connect Key to unlock all of the premium features. The exact best way to do this will vary depending on what type of server/account you have, but I hope the general idea described here helps!

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anonymous
  • Answer
  • Answered

Hi, info! If you're referring to the backups made with cPanel's Backup Manager, you're going to be a bit limited as the nature of the software favors streamlining/'set it and forget it' over granular configuration. If you're on a VPS or Reseller account, there are some more options available at the WHM level that may be of help to you. One thing you may want to try is setting the 'default' backup to exclude email, then manually create full cPanel account backups on a weekly basis that include email (and everything else).


My personal choice, if I were in this situation, would be to configure the Backup Manager to backup everything except emails/other backups, manually perform a cPanel backup on a weekly basis covering the entire account, and then adding a backup solution to the website itself-- if it's a WordPress site, something like our BoldGrid Total Upkeep could easily be configured to create the daily backups you're discussing-- and store them externally on something like a GDrive or AWS S3! As long as you're careful not to 'backup the backups' and create a spiral of ever-growing backups that cause you to run out of disk space, strategic use of multiple backup solutions is probably going to get what you're looking for with a minimal amount of fuss. 


The benefit here is that the Backup Manager lets you restore individual files/folders easily, the WordPress/other site plugins let you carefully configure exactly what is most important for a given site, and then you have weekly full account backups (ideally downloaded and stored somewhere secure) as a fallback in case something unusual happens. 

Side note: if you do use Total Upkeep, just remember to use your BoldGrid Connect Key to unlock all of the premium features. The exact best way to do this will vary depending on what type of server/account you have, but I hope the general idea described here helps!