About scheduling backups

A scheduled backup automatically invokes a full backup of all files at the scheduled date and time. A full backup backs up all the files for the chosen type of backup, not only the files that have changed. Scheduling backups frees up manual resources and saves the inconvenience of remembering to invoke regular manual backups.

A full backup can be scheduled for:

- Sites

- Users of sites

- Important: Ensure that the target server has enough disk space, failing which, the backup will terminate.

- Note: If you back up the site and user files into the same backup directory, selecting files for restoring can be overwhelming, as during restore, all the backed up files are listed.
  It is recommended that you back them up separately in different backup directories, to quickly identify the files you want to restore.
  For example, you could back up the site files to a site_backup directory and back up users to a user_backup directory, instead of backing them all up in one common directory, say, my_backup.

# Backup pre-requisites

Ensure you have fulfilled the following requirements:

- The name of the FTP server on which you want to save your data

- Your FTP login user name and password to log onto the FTP server

- The directory path of the backup directory on the FTP server

- Maximum size (in Megabytes or Gigabytes) of the backup file

- Important: Various file systems and FTP server utilities have limits on the file size they can handle. If the file system or the FTP server utility of your backup server can not handle the file size mentioned in the Maximum Backup File Size field, then WEBppliance splits the file into multiple files before continuing with the backup.
  The split files follow the naming convention given below:
  <backupfilename.tar.gz>
  <backupfilename.1.tar.gz>
  <backupfilename.2.tar.gz>

# Planning a backup schedule

A full backup consumes time and disk space. When you back up data, the existing archive is not overwritten; a new backup file (in tar or .gz format) is written to your backup server.

It is important that you schedule the backup at a time of low user traffic.

- Note: While the sites hosted will be accessible during a backup, activities or events in progress, such as modifications to files or email messages received during this period may not be backed up.

A backup can be scheduled daily, weekly or monthly. Frequency of changes to a file is a good indicator of how often you need to back up the file. If the frequency of data revisions is high, then a backup must be scheduled daily, so that loss of data is minimal.

# Confirming successful backup

If the files are backed up successfully to the backup server, you will receive a mail notification to that effect. The mail is sent to the email address specified at the time of scheduling the backup.