Backup VestaCP with Restic [Ubuntu]

VestaCP is a great and popular open-source control panel for managing your VPS. Backups can be difficult to do on your own after it reaches a certain file size, but Restic makes it easy with an intuitive interface and simple commands.

Restic offers online backup services along with the ability to back up data from local machines as well as cloud storage providers like Google Drive, Amazon S3, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox. It supports both rsync and zsync protocols for backups. In this tutorial, we will set up Restic in order to backup our VestaCP server that runs Ubuntu Linux operating system.

I wrote this how-to after my VestaCP install went north of +100GB after the backup started failing or pausing. I considered turning the backups off but decided that wasn’t a good idea. To achieve an extra level of safety, I started backing up my server to S3 using Restic.

Here are the steps I took to backup my server to S3 using Restic

1. SSH into your box

ssh [email protected]

2. Install Restic

apt install restic

*if you don’t have AWS CLI installed, here is a handy tutorial

3. Add Credentials

Tell your box what credentials to use when connecting to AWS S3 by copy ‘n pasting this into terminal:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="########"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="########"

*Lost on finding your AWS credentials? Here is where to find help

4. Initiate the bucket

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET init

Enter a password, if you lose that password, you’re no bueno!

5. Start the backup

Begin the backup, this could take a few hours.

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET backup /home --exclude /home/backup

Remember to replace BUCKET with your S3 bucket name. You will want to exclude your backup section.

6. View Snapshot

Here is how you can view your snapshots saved to S3:

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET snapshots

7. How to delete a Snapshot

Need to delete one? Try this:

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET forget #####

Replace # with the snapshot ID

8. Automate the process

Looking to create a cron job? Create a SH script and add it to VestaCP / CRON:

cd home
nano backup-script.sh

Adding this info to your SH file:

# backup-script.sh
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="####"
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="####"
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD="###"

restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET backup /home --exclude /home/backup
restic -r s3:s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET forget -q --prune --keep-hourly 24 --keep-daily 7

I’m telling my backup to keep 1 backup an hour, for 7 days. If you make 3 backups in the past hour, it will delete 2 and save 1, then prune/consolidate chunks/organize the backups so you aren’t charged for extra storage.

9. Reminding Vesta to run the process

Now you need to tell Vesta when to run the backup + where to log the process:

/home/backupscript.sh > /home/backupscript.log 2>&1

I have this set for every day at 2 am.

Using B2 Backblaze

Some people showed interest in using Backblaze + adding mySQLdump.

The setup is basically the same as using AWS S3, but instead, you use B2 Account ID + Key:

export B2_ACCOUNT_ID="ENTER-UR-ID-NUMBER"
export B2_ACCOUNT_KEY="ENTER-UR-SECRET-KEY"

restic -r b2:BUCKET init

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="b2:BUCKET"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD="###"
restic -r b2:BUCKET backup /home --exclude /home/backup
restic -r b2:BUCKET forget -q --prune --keep-hourly 24 --keep-daily 7

Adding mySQLdump to the mix

You can dump all of your databases into a single file by using the following command:

mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases > alldb.sql

You may want to use some of these options:

mysqldump -u root -p --opt --all-databases > alldb.sql
mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases --skip-lock-tables > alldb.sql

Import:

mysql -u root -p < alldb.sql