VPS & Dedicated Hosting: Configure Backups through WHM

There are two services available to configure backups through WHM on your VPS or Dedicated server: the Backup and Legacy Backup. The latter is an older service which is being deprecated. We recommend switching to the Backup system using the instructions below if you are still using it. This offers more options, greater flexibility in the number of backups retained, and a better user interface.

• User Selection
• Backup Configuration
  • How to Enable or Disable Backups
  • How to Modify your Backup Schedule
• Sending Backups to a Remote Location
  • Additional Destinations
• Switching from Legacy Backup to Backup
• Legacy Backup Configuration
  • How to Enable or Disable Backups
  • Modifying your Backup Schedule
  • Enabling Compression for Backups
• Summary

To configure the system backups running on your VPS or Dedicated server, you need to log into your WHM. All the necessary tools can be accessed through the Backup section or by typing backup into the search bar.

User Selection

Suppose you have multiple cPanel accounts, or you are finding that you don't see any backups but have them enabled. In that case, you may want to check the Backup User Selection section in WHM to ensure backups are enabled using the correct usernames for your chosen service. This also allows you to choose which accounts are backed up if some of your accounts do not need to be archived. This can help save space on the server by avoiding unnecessary backups. But please be aware you are responsible for ensuring that you have the appropriate data backups for your needs.

Backup Configuration

How to enable or disable backups

To enable or disable all users, click Account Actions.

To enable or disable an individual user, toggle Enable to Disable and vice versa.

When enabling, most of the default settings should be good, but there are some that you should look at. In particular, the Retention values should be set to a value that will ensure your backups fit in the space available on the server.

How to modify your Backup Configuration

Toggle the backup activity by checking the checkbox beside Backup Status on the Backup Configuration page. Scroll down to the Scheduling and Retention section to modify your backup.

There are three sections: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly, each of which has a similar layout. Below is the layout for the Daily Backup:

The options labeled in the picture above are as follows:

1. Whether the chosen backup is enabled or not
2. On which days the chosen backup will run
3. The number of completed backups held on the server

For example, the current retention is 2. On Tuesday night, before the backup runs, there will be a backup from Sunday and Monday. The Sunday backup will be deleted on successful completion, leaving the Monday and Tuesday backups present.

The Strictly enforce retention, regardless of backup success option, means the above cycling of backups will take place even if a backup is not complete entirely. There is a crashed database table, meaning that the database cannot be fully backed up. This option helps to avoid the server running out of space but means your backups may not be complete. We tend to recommend leaving it unchecked.

Sending backups to a Remote Location

A good way of avoiding space issues on the server is to send the backups to another location. The Backup service supports a range of destinations, including Google Drive, Amazon S3, and SFTP. This is accessed through the 'Additional Destinations' tab towards the top of the page:

On that page, you would choose the type of remote location from the drop-down list and then press the 'Create New Destination' button.

Additional Destinations

Each will have its parameters that need to be configured. For example, to use SFTP, you would need to provide the remote host, username, and password. More information on setting up remote destinations can be found here in cPanel's documentation.

One important option regarding this is on the main page. A checkbox for 'Retain Backups in the Default Backup Directory is near the bottom. If this is checked, the system backups will stay on the server in addition to being sent off-site. If this is unchecked, the local copy will be deleted after the backup has completed its transfer to the remote location.

Switching from Legacy Backup to Backup

The easiest way to switch is through the Backup System Migration option within WHM.

This copies your existing Legacy Backup configuration to the Backup service and moves any Legacy Backup into the appropriate location. However, as discussed above, you should check the Backup configuration to ensure all settings are appropriate.

Legacy Backup Configuration

The Legacy Backup system is deprecated and will be completely removed in the future release of WHM. However, some servers may still be running this service. We encourage you to switch to the Backup service using the instructions above.

How to enable or disable backups

From Backup Status, choose Enable / Disable, go to the bottom of the page, and click the Save button.

Modifying your Backup Schedule

• To change what backups you want to run, you need to edit both the Backup Interval and Backup Retention.
  
• To disable Weekly and/or Monthly backups, you need to uncheck them from the Backup Retention line and click the Save button.
  
• To disable the daily backup and only keep a weekly backup, check weekly on the Backup interval and uncheck from backup retention daily. Then make sure monthly is off if you want it off or on if you want it on. After that, go to the bottom and click the Save button.
  

Enabling Compression for Backups

Compressing your backup will save quite a lot of space, but you will need to remember that it takes up more resources and time to generate.

Summary

This is an article on how to configure system backups on a VPS or Dedicated server with the help of WHM. It talks about two services, namely, Backup and Legacy Backup. The recommendation for the backup service comes from the Legacy Backup service. The Backup service comes with more choices, flexibility, and a better user interface. To configure backups, you must be logged into your WHM. You are allowed to enable and disable backup for all or individual users. In addition, you can choose a variant of the schedule to back up and send the contents to a remote location.