Cpanel Backups and W3 Total Cache

Crunchy

Member
I have always backed up through CPanel with no issues. I liked being able to restore immediately and on my own if needed. But due to increased traffic, I have recently had to install W3 Total Cache.

While the performance has been great, now the backup sizes have become way too large and now use up too much bandwidth with each backup. I assume it is most likely the cache file itself that is multiplying the size of the backup. I tried "empty all caches" in the plugin admin panel prior to backing up, but this does not seem to reduce the size of the backup at all. Actually, it did once, but doesn't today.

Any ideas on how to resolve this. I mean, I guess I could rely on Knownhost backups and do my upgrades very early in the morning so that I could have support reinstall the entire container if something goes awry, but I obviously like to be able to do this myself as well without using all of my bandwidth in the process.

I really only need to backup once or twice a week and before upgrades. I am not comfortable doing lots of shell commands yet, so I realize this limits my options....
 
Heya Crunchy,

Is this just on one domain we are talking about or is it installed for multiple domains? If it were for multiple domains you would have to empty the cache for each separately of course. You could always run down the cache files yourself too and see the actual disk usage before/after clearing the cache to see if anything actually changes there or not. If you were feeling adventurous could even delete them manually.

So you download the file to your local machine after the backup is completed and that is the bandwidth you are concerned about? You could copy it onto another remote server such as Amazon's S3 or BQbackup or something along those lines.
 
It's just one domain that has this traffic. The others are pretty much static business sites that don't change very often and don't have a large number of pages, so even when they are backed up (and they use W3 Total Cache as well) they don't have much size added from the cache.

The main one is a local event site that has an event calendar and almost 600 events atm so it has a large cache folder. It's funny though, the last time I tried emptying the cache via the plugin it worked fine and backed up at a tidy 33mb. But today it didn't, and I quit the first backup at 100mb and the 2nd and 3rd at 50mb(after emptying the cache via plugin admin page). I may just contact the plugin author, I'm sure he's run across this with others and he seems to be relatively responsive as plugin authors go.

And I had thought about manually emptying the cache folder, by FTP I'm assuming. That is a definite possibility.

But, since I take Sunday and Monday off (it's a nightlife event site that really revolves around the weekend), therefore not many or zero updates those days, I may just do my updating early Tuesday morning and rely on Knownhost. Since they do backups every 2 days, surely I could rely on them creating one between say 7pm or so Saturday and 1-2am Tuesday morning...?

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm surprised...usually you not active until around 9:30am the next day. But always spot on.
 
And I could even wait until Tuesday afternoon, but I am assuming it is much easier to get support in the very early morning (1-4am) rather than regular business hours.
 
Morning Crunchy!

My own site is like a 1.8GB backup file so 100-200MB isn't all that bad although it can be time consuming if you want to download those backups locally and don't have a high speed connection. It's also going to get tedious having to delete all of the cache files every time you want to run a backup though too, that's just a judgement call that you have to make I guess ;) If the backup is only 1-300MB it wouldn't mean all that much disk usage to just leave it on your VPS though either, just a thought.

Sounds like your best bet will be to take a look at their forums and maybe contact the author and see what he says.
 
Am I mistaken thinking that a 200mb backup to my local computer is going to be a 200mb cost on my monthly bandwidth?

Which would also be a 200mb cost to restore the backup? Meaning almost half a gig to backup and restore one time?
 
Hi Crunchy,

Nope not mistaken at all. Even the VPS-1 comes with 1500GB of bandwidth though so you would have to do an awful lot of backups to eat that up, right?
 
Oh my, I just realized where I was amiss. Heh, I'm too embarrassed to mention it but I'm sure you realize. Live and learn I suppose.

This is really a non-issue. My bad. You have my permission to tell me I'm an idiot if I do something similar in the future.
 
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