Changes in VPS backups management

KH-Paul

Co-founder/Partner
Staff member
Starting from today, 07/17/2008, all servers in TX and LA datacenters were switched to the new backup scheme, systems located in San Jose, CA continue to utilize original backups management scheme and currently we do not have plans to change backups management in SJ, CA.
New backup functionality allows to reduce load on production systems during the backup creation time. The only other visible change related to the new VPS backup management scheme is that VPS backups won't be listed on the Maintenance page in the account's Power Panel and, as such, won't be available for self-restoration. If you require a VPS to be restored from the backup please submit a ticket, there will be no charge for this service at least until backups management will re-appear in the Power Panel. Please note that manual backup restoration requests could take up to 24-48 hours to complete.

Quick facts about the complimentary VPS backups we provide:
- We do our best to create backups of every VPS / Hybrid server every other night;
- All VPS / Hybrid backups are done by us as a part of complimentary service which is free of charge;
- VPS / Hybrid server backups are stored on remote backup cluster. These backups are not located on the same machine where your VPS / Hybrid server is hosted and, as such, in case of physical hosting system failure we still should be able to restore your account from the backup which is the main purpose of the complimentary backup service we run;
- VPS / Hybrid backups do not take any resources such as disk space, memory, etc from your account - all backup operations are done outside of your account and are not taking any toll on your resources;
- In most cases at this time we store 2 full and up to 3 incremental backups per VPS / Hybrid server. In other words this means that backups can go back in time anywhere between approx 1-2 weeks. It is quite important to remember that we do not keep your VPS backups for months or years.
- While we do our best to keep VPS and Hybrid servers backed up we do not guarantee availability or consistency of backups we create. It is very important to remember to keep your own (remotely stored) backups of your important data. We do not hold any responsibility for any possible data loss that may have occurred due to accidental data removal, account termination, hardware failure, etc.
 
Just a quick clarification - backups are not visible in the Power Panel on all VZ v3 nodes, VZ v4 will properly show all auto-created backups.
 
mylinear, all current production servers have v3 installed. We plan to start provisioning accounts on VZ v4 this weekend / in first days next week. After that we will continue tests related to VPS migrations from v3 to v4 nodes and will provide upgrade related information through the "Network and Hardware status" section of this forum once all required preparations for mass upgrades will be done.
 
We never used R1Soft in production but considered it until we got a (pretty expected) response in the http://forums.knownhost.com/showthread.php?t=1600 thread. New backup clusters are VZ v4 ready and inability of Power Panel which comes with v3 to work correctly is considered as a bug by us but as a "limitation" by the software vendor.
 
Can we get a current status on this?

According to this post from Paul backups are working but we cannot see them. I have confirmed this to still be true as of today, I cannot see my backups. So are they really there? What happens if I initiate a restore, will it actually restore?

It seems as though this will continue to be the case until VZ V4 is in place and that was supposed to start happening 7/17/08 according to this thread. Was that not the case?
 
I do not see the backups listed in my VZPP either. However, if you submit a ticket to support, they will check and let you know your backup dates. For example, they listed my backups for the past week or so on alternate dates. The backups are there, just not listed in VZPP.

I also noticed the "New Backup" button is enabled. I believe you can use it to make an instant backup, but I dare not try it just in case it conflicts with the backups that KH makes and messes up things.

I would also apreciate an update on this from KH.
 
Hello Mylinear,

I also noticed the "New Backup" button is enabled. I believe you can use it to make an instant backup, but I dare not try it just in case it conflicts with the backups that KH makes and messes up things.

I noticed this too but also was reluctant to do so as previously you had to delete all existing backups before initiating a new one. New hardware is in place now so maybe it's different but I do not know if that's actually the case or not.
 
We create backups every other night, you can confirm this by checking status changes screen in the Power Panel - it should show "backing up" every other day. If you need to get VPS restored from the backup please open support ticket and we'll take care of this with 24-48 hours (usually faster).
 
Yes, backups are to seperate servers which have the sole purpose of backups (in RAID).

Thanks,
Joel
 
We can restore the entire VPS from any of these backups for free per request. This is how it's currently setup. Just let us know if this is needed and we will do it.
 
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