Backups
Backups are organized around assets, things worth protecting on their own. Your account has:
- one asset for the home directory, with your website files and application data
- one asset per database
- one asset per domain user
Each asset is snapshotted automatically on its own schedule. A snapshot is a complete copy from one point in time, which you can restore or download.
Each asset's page shows its schedule, retention rules (how many daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots are kept), and exclusion list. None of them can be edited, and there's no "back up now" button.
The system's job is to make backups happen without anyone having to remember them. Yours is only the recovery.
Before a risky migration, make your own copy. A database dump and a file-manager archive are both a manual backup.
What the system leaves out
A snapshot of the home directory deliberately skips what you can produce
again and what's temporary: dependency directories such as node_modules/
or vendor/, caches, temporary files, logs, and the trash.
Run npm install or composer install. The restore returns the source,
the configuration, and the data; the packages come fresh.
Restore
| Restore in place | Download the snapshot | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Returns the whole asset (the home directory, the database, or the mailbox) to the state of the snapshot. | Gives you a compressed archive to take what you need from. |
| Anything made after the snapshot | Removed. | Unchanged. |
| Right for | Real damage: a failed upgrade, a compromise, a large deletion. | One file you need back, and a copy of important state kept away from the server. |
The confirmation step asks you to accept exactly that. It's the wrong tool for getting one file back.
A restore streams its progress live, and a large asset takes time. Leave the page open until it reports completion.
Read an asset's page
Each asset shows its backup interval, retention policy, Last Run, and Next Earliest Backup, plus the list of snapshots with their sizes and durations.
Two habits are worth having:
- Check Last Run from time to time on anything important, so you find a failing backup before you need it.
- Download what you want to keep before deleting something. When you delete a database or a domain user, it's no longer backed up, and its existing snapshots stay only until the retention rules remove them.