Overview
Backing up your content is very important. Backups help protect your content in the case of unforeseen catastrophes and provide known good instances of your sites and data that you may revert to. While our system maintains regular internal backups of all customer data for emergency recovery purposes, these are overwritten on a rotating basis. Therefore, it is best not to rely on these backups for your individual backup needs. So, depending on the situation and timing of your need for a backup, these internal disaster recovery backups may not be a solution for you. This is where self-managed backups are important. Plesk itself has it’s own backup tool that you may use to manage your own backups to meet your specific needs. The following article details how to instantly backup your site, and restore from backups you have created.
Creating an instant backup
With an instant backup, you can create an immediate backup of your domain’s configuration, data and/or email. The following directions detail how to create a full backup of a domain.
- Log into Plesk
- Click on Domains
- Click on Manage Domain or Manage Hosting
- Click on Websites & Domains
- Click on Backup Manager
- Then, click Back Up.
- Choose your options in the Backup Settings. This includes adding a prefix to the backup name, choosing to make a multivolume backup, where the backup will be created, and if a notification is desired.
- From the same window, choose the “Domain configuration and content” option. When this is done, the drop down box to the right will become active and you can choose the type of backup you want that will include content for your domain. The “All configuration and content” option will make a full backup of your domain.
- The last option on this page allows you to suspend the domain while it is being backed up. Suspending the domain will make the domain temporarily unavailable to web traffic while it is being backed up.
- When you are finished customizing your backup, click “Back Up” to immediately backup your domain.
- This will return you to the Backup Manager. When the backup is complete, you will see it listed below. You may need to refresh the page to see the new backup.
- At this point, you may also choose to save a copy of this backup to your local computer. To do so, click the green arrow that is to the far right of the desired backup.
Restoring a backup
- Log into Plesk
- Click on Domains
- Click on Manage Domain or Manage Hosting
- Click on Websites & Domains
- Click on Backup Manager
- Select the existing backup you wish to restore from the list of backups in your Server Repository or Personal FTP Repository.
- Select the items within the backup that you wish to restore.
- Click Restore to restore from your selected backup.