There are two backup methods supported on VPS accounts.

Manual Backups

Manual backups are snapshots of your VPS image that you can make, usually before making a major website update, installing a new software application, or making some other significant change to the VPS that you my need to restore in the event of a problem occurring.

Depending on your VPS service plan, a specific amount of storage space will be allocated to you to make backups, and you may store as many manual backups as fit completely in this space. If there is insufficient space to make a new backup, you must first delete an older image or purchase additional space.

To make a manual backup:

• Log on to your control panel
• Click Hosting -> VPS -> VPS Backups -> Manual backups -> Add New Backup
• Give your backup a name, and select if you want to make a full backup (most common) or a base/incremental backup.
• Decide if you wish to stop the VPS (recommended if you have an active database). Click Next.
• Review the backup settings and click Finish

Your backup will be started- the status of the backup will be displayed on the Manual Backups page.

Scheduled Backups

Your service plan may include the facility for automated scheduled backups of your VPS. In this case, your plan will include a specific allocation for scheduled backup space. The system will store as many nightly full image backups of your VPS as fit completely in this space. If there is insufficient space, the oldest backup will be removed automatically. You can purchase additional space to allow more backups to be stored (maximum 8).

You can see your scheduled backups as follows ...

• Log on to your control panel
• Click Hosting -> VPS -> VPS Backups -> Scheduled Backups

Your control panel will list the dates & sizes of all scheduled backups. There are no user settings for scheduled backups except that you can disable or enable scheduled backups by clicking the 'Settings' tab.

Restoring your VPS

*** Warning - restoring a VPS will overwrite EVERYTHING on your virtual private server ***

To restore your VPS from a backup, do the following ...

• Log on to your control panel
• Click Hosting -> VPS -> VPS Backups
• Click Manual Backups or Scheduled Backups
• Click on the backup image you would like to restore
• Check that the date, size and backup type are correct
• Click Restore & confirm OK

The restore operation will begin (refresh the backups list to see the current state)
Backup and restore operations may take some time to complete if there is a lot of data to compress and copy.

Important note regarding VPS backups.

A VPS image backup is just that - a snapshot of the entire VPS image. The primary function of VPS backups is to rollback unsuccessful major changes to your environment and for disaster recovery purposes. Although a VPS images contains every file and setting for the VPS, it is recommended that you additionally use other backup methods such as scheduled windows backups or cron jobs to safely backup critical data within the VPS that you may need to restore without reloading the entire image or data that you need to save more frequently. This is especially important for databases or other rapidly changing data as VPS backup is NOT guaranteed to be transaction safe unless the VPS is stopped during the backup.

VPS backup does NOT truncate MS SQL server logs.