Standard VPS backups how to

🌟 Key Backup Features and Policies

As of this publishing, the following policies apply to your remote VPS images:

• Retention: Backups are automatically deleted after 45 days from the creation date.
• Limit: You may maintain up to 3 concurrent backups at any given time.
• Size: Each individual backup can be up to 1 TB in size.

⚙️ How the Backup Process Works

Our backup system is designed for maximum efficiency and zero downtime. The process involves:

1. Creating an instantaneous snapshot of your VPS file system.
2. Compressing the snapshot using the efficient Zstandard algorithm.
3. Securely sending the compressed snapshot to our remote object storage.

Because this is a full, complete image of your VPS, these backups are invaluable for:

• Full VPS Restoration: Quickly restoring your server to a previous, stable state if needed.
• Migration/Cloning: Taking the image and restoring it onto a different VPS instance.

🚀 Simple Steps to Generate a Backup

Creating a remote image of your VPS is quick and easy:

1. Log in to your InterServer customer portal at my.interserver.net.
2. Select the specific VPS you wish to back up.
3. In the links section, select Backup VPS.

   

4. Follow the prompts to initiate the backup process.

💡 Object Storage Migration: Swift to MinIO

In late 2025, we are transitioning our object storage platform from the legacy Swift system to MinIO. During this transition, your stored backups may display as being on either Swift or MinIO. This change enhances performance and reliability without affecting your access or the integrity of your data. Swift storage previous stored screen shots if a restart in my.interserver.net was sent for possible debugging later for error messages. These are no longer taken, are not backups, and will not be stored going forward on minio storage.

🛠️ Technical Deep Dive (Under the Hood)

For the technically inclined, here is how the magic happens:

• Compression: Zstandard (zstd) for fast, high-ratio compression.
• Filesystem: Utilizes the robust ZFS file system.
• Restoration: The ZFS image is restored to a standard qcow2 file for immediate use on a new or existing VPS.

**Important Consideration: Single-File Restoration**

Due to the nature of these full-image backups, extracting a single file is a complex operation. It requires downloading the entire image, restoring it to a ZFS file system or a new VPS, mounting the backup, and then extracting the specific data needed.

For more granular, file-level recovery needs, we strongly recommend implementing a local or application-level backup solution alongside our remote image backups.