Applicable to:
- Plesk for Linux
Question
How do backups to remote storage (FTP or cloud) work?
Answer
Starting from Plesk Onyx 17.5, when a backup is configured to be created on remote storage, Plesk does not create a full local copy of it. Instead, Plesk transfers the backup in parts:
-
First, a backup file of the largest Plesk domain service (database, mailbox, website web content) is created locally as a temporary archive in
/var/lib/psa/dumps. -
Then this created archive is transferred to remote storage by parts of 100MB without additional compression;
-
Simultaneously with transferring the backup to the remote storage, creation of a new archive is starting;
- Backups are uploaded into the single file
backup_<YYMMDDHHmm>.taron the remote storage (if multivolume backup is no selected); -
After the archive has been uploaded to remote storage, it is removed from the Plesk server.
Note: Since parts of backup files are created simultaneously, it is good practice to have free space equal at least to half of the full backup size. But minimum free disk space should be equal to the size of two largest subscriptions on the server.
The following resources on the remote storage are affected during the backup creation:
- Inbound traffic on the remote storage equals to the size of the uploaded backups.
- Outbound traffic is insignificant and is used for checking the structure of uploaded backups.
- Consumed disk space quals to the size of the uploaded backups.
- Files are uploaded into the remote storage during the execution of a single durable operation.
Comments
9 comments
Hi,
I have enable remote backup to a Google Drive server. This works fine but despite not having enabled "Server Storage" I can see that the backup folder is growing by the day. See print screen below. Why ?
Hello @Jean-Luc Sorry for the delayed answer, please let me your Plesk version from the 'plesk version' command output.
We are facing the same issue with Plesk for Linux, our /var/lib/psa/dumps ended up being over 400GB+. We use a remote FTP server, so why is it our local storage is filling up and not being deleted after sync?
Server Info
OS: CentOS 7
Plesk: Onyx Version 17.8.11 Update #34
Hello Joe,
There can be several possible reasons:
1. Upload to remote storage fails due to some reasons and you have "Save backups in the server storage if the upload to FTP fails" option enabled under Tools & Settings - Backup Manager - Settings.
2. You have customers on the server who have permissions to create their own backups and they create backups on the local storage. You can find the customers and domains which occupy much disk space with help of this article Backup structure in Plesk for Linux
How does the explained procedure affect the traffic and actions on the remote storage? Given that for S3 storage you might be payed based on a) actions on the server b) the amount of incoming traffic (to the storage space) c) the amount of outgoing traffic (from the remote storage) and d) the amount of remote storage space. Can you perhaps give a concrete example (obviously with only estimated numbers)?
Given that you seem to send separate files to the storage - how are they combined to one joint file at the remote side?
Maybe you can also add this information to the manual (and link to this article from the manual)?
Hello @b_p,
Please let me address your questions:
The article has been updated as well. Thank you for your remarks!
@... Some more details might also be helpful on https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/administrator-guide/backing-up-and-restoration/global-backup-settings.59265/. It should be explained over there (or on one of the subpages) how the backup process works and what to keep in mind regarding required disk space.
For instance, my server (210 of 300 GB disk space is used, a full Plesk backup consumes 130 GB) stopped the backup today with the message "not enough disk space for your backup". I assume this was due to the fact that I set the option "start backup only if ... GB disk space available" to 80 GB. I lowered this to 70 GB now and probably need to check if that works out...?
Hello BP,
Thank you for the input. More details about the backup process can be found in the official Plesk documentation such as the one you have linked or the link found in the Additional Information section.
The option you mentioned is designed to prevent Plesk backups from consuming all free disk space or prevent the backup from starting if there is not enough free space on the server. We have a guide which describes the same https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000300985-How-to-prevent-Plesk-backups-to-consume-all-free-disk-space-
I'm trying to find information on the security of the transfer process.
I use the following plugins and am trying to understand when Plesk creates the backup and sends it to S3 what security measures are in place during the transfer. Does it use SFTP? Is it transferred over HTTPS? If someone could please leave a comment and a link explaining the process I would appreciate it.
https://www.plesk.com/extensions/s3-backup/
https://www.plesk.com/extensions/offer-complete-backup-solution/
https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/customer-guide/backing-up-and-restoring-websites/configuring-remote-storage.78922/
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