Best backup solution for my server and vps
reddit / selfhosted

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Either_Audience_1937 · 2023-11-05 13:29

I host several apps on both my vps and home server

Can I get some advices for backup-ing both of them?

My home server is just a mini pc with 2 sata slot

For the vps, it's DO vps

I need a way to restore the app quickly if something bad happen,
especially for the accounting and erp app

Thanks

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SkipTam · 2023-11-05 13:38

Awesome selfhosted and awesome sysadmin are great resources!
Personally I use restic (auto restic) for quick backups and proxmox
backup server for VM backups.

If you use a specific filesystem like ZFS, btrfs etc. you can use
there included snapshot functionality to create snapshots and send
these to another machine.

https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin#backups

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dazchad · 2023-11-05 15:43

The comment from SkipTam is spot on.

> I need a way to restore the app quickly if something bad happen,
especially for the accounting and erp app

Each app has their own restore procedure, so you should make a backup
and try to restore and take notes. If it involves more than restoring
the database, then you should create a script, or at the very least a
runbook on how to do that. Otherwise when your system goes down, you
will spend the whole day trying to wire things back together, only to
forget to have written down the admin password
(https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Immaculate_Backup_)

Also, if this is critical for you, you may consider putting each
critical app on a VM, and do regular snapshots of that VM. That way,
in case of meltdown, you can easily restore a VM snapshot. And to be
clear, the database and accessory files are not inside the VM, just
the app and its configuration.

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chaplin2 · 2023-11-05 18:01

ZFS and restic got you covered

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digitalindependent · 2023-11-05 20:11

I really love Borg with borgmatic.

It’s a simple yaml file on my local home server. That controls Borg
backup.

Every night it mounts my various devices and VPSes via SSHFS (one
simple command per machine) onto the local file system, backs all that
up and disconnects the SSHFS mount again.

The backup is encrypted, deduplicated (!) and you can either restore
single files or the whole things.

A tiny bit of a learning curve but very worth it