Backup maintenance

[dxer]

I have additional hard disk on server for backup. Backup is set from WHM -daily backup. I want to learn more about that option but I don't see details I want to learn about.

So , I have some questions regarding this

- Is backup growing non-stop or it is deleting old files at some point ? What I meant is do I have backups from the time I set backup to run or just for the past week or so ?

- If it is keeping files like month old or older, how can I maintain this files . What if I want to delete all files that are older than month ? How can I do this from WHM ?

- When restoring daily backups, can I choose specific date to restore from? I looked at this daily restoring option but I'am not getting an option to select specific date so I don't know what is the point for daily backup if I can not choose date for restoring point .

[rpmws]

Originally posted by dxer
I have additional hard disk on server for backup. Backup is set from WHM -daily backup. I want to learn more about that option but I don't see details I want to learn about.

So , I have some questions regarding this

- Is backup growing non-stop or it is deleting old files at some point ? What I meant is do I have backups from the time I set backup to run or just for the past week or so ?

- If it is keeping files like month old or older, how can I maintain this files . What if I want to delete all files that are older than month ? How can I do this from WHM ?

- When restoring daily backups, can I choose specific date to restore from? I looked at this daily restoring option but I'am not getting an option to select specific date so I don't know what is the point for daily backup if I can not choose date for restoring point .

backups are replaced every time they are run.

<daily> is replaced with a new copy everyday.
<weekly> is a copy once per week
<monthly> is a copy that happens once a month.


if you use "daily" , the last backup has replaced the one done the day before, the next backup will replace the files you have now. Same thing for weekly and monthly only at those intervals. The only wasted space may be from deleted sites you no longer have hosted.

When you restore you have option of daily, weekly, monthly.
Well you get that choice. The backup that you have is the one you get. So if backups ran at 4am and you want to restore at 5am you get a copy of what that account contained at 4am. If you restore at 3:50am, you get restored copy of what was backed up at 4am the night before. Almost 24hours ago. Same goes true for weekly and monthly. Only those backups don't change as often. Often you will find a customer wanting a restore. If they ask for something that was 2 days ago you can't do it in most cases unless weekly happened to grab a copy that he needs. Depending on what day it is, sometimes you will find customers wanting a "working copy" that is several days back. Well you should have weekly and monthly you can offer with the exception of if between the site changed to "bad" and the time you run restore all 3 backups rotated. That would mean you would have brand new monthly (broken), brand new weekly (broken) and daily as well. In cases like that your client is SOL. The term "bad" and "broken" I am using to describe a backup copy of what the client doesn't want.

If you SSH into your box and look inside that cpbackup folder you can see the time/date stamps on the folders telling you when the last file was written in that folder. That will give you an idea of how old those copies are in those folders.

just do a la -lh while inside the cpbackup folder.

[PWSowner]

That's why I use my own backup system.

I have 2 seperate backup scripts, daily and weekly, that use txt files to specify which accounts to be backed up. I have a copy of client sites at 4am for the last 2 days, and 5am for the last 2 Sundays. I only backup my business sites weekly since I have it on my hard drive anyway, and I don't back up my personal sites.

[webafrica]

I changed from monthly backup retention to just weekly. However I still have a huge *monthly* folder there... I cant delete it as it says its read only.