Downloading snapshots into local machines

September 7, 2015 35.8k views
Backups
pedrompenteado
By:
pedrompenteado

The text below was posted on March 18, 2013. I am pretty sure Digital Ocean has created a way to download snapshot in a local machine at this point.
I would like to receive a step by step tutorial do do this procedure. Thank you very much.

"2. Snapshot and Backup Downloads
Customers have already been requesting that we provide a way for them to directly download their snapshots and backups so they can store them locally and allow for data portability. We will be implementing this as soon as possible. While this may seem like a trivial item to add, the complexity in rolling out this feature is to ensure security in the rollout because data will need to be made available from the backend NAS systems (which are completely off of the public network currently)."

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12 Answers
jitenderjb December 28, 2015

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/132797/how-to-dd-a-remote-disk-using-ssh-on-local-machine-and-save-to-a-local-disk

If your intent is to backup a remote computer's HDD A via SSH to a single file that's on your local computer's HDD, you could do one of the following...

run from local computer

$ ssh user@remote "dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -1 -" | dd of=image.gz
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  • aveeshkumar September 7, 2016

    Thx for quoting - did not know this. Very useful

  • gabrielfair September 5, 2017

    Has anyone tried this? Does it work?

  • mikerscope January 26, 2018

    I would do it from a different instance on D.O., not directly to your home/biz then you can just either use sftp or even put it on a password protected webpage and download it.

  • kurotsuki August 7, 2018

    It does worked. Well... Not downloading the snapshot created on DigitalOcean, but the whole storage drive itself.
    Anyway.... Is there any way to restore his downloaded "storage snapshot" back into a newly created droplet?

  • mikejakubik September 10, 2018

    You will get inconsistent data using this method, and restoration will be a pain in the ass. You're better off using tar or something similar.

tailtwister August 16, 2016

Will this policy change with the new snapshot policy of having to pay to store them?

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oscarmeier September 8, 2016

Same here... moving on because of the shift in policy on snapshots and the inability to download them to our own storage. Also feeling like the new block storage pricing is a missed opportunity. To price it so highly means it can't fulfill our needs, which is affordable local-to-the-droplet storage.

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eldin September 7, 2015

Hello and welcome to Digitalocean,

"Unfortunately you are unable to store a snapshot or backup outside of our environment."

Sorry to say it :-(

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Peter7331282562 August 23, 2016

I was wondering the same thing. It would be nice to save locally, keep them on a external hdd or something, and then upload straight back up in case you ever need to. I usually make a lot of snapshots for the case you might ever need a full-backup and that does not happen often, so storing on local storage is very cheap that way.

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psyriccio September 6, 2016

Well, apparently I have to manually move all the most necessary, restoring many of my snapshots. Then, snapshots, and the droplet will be removed, and I'll have to find another hosting.

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zizozoro February 19, 2017

any new news ?

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ric6be87d6d7fad375e549bc38 April 24, 2017

Has anybody done a personal Snapshot as detailed above and then done a successful restore?

Isn't that the test of a backup?

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codepharmacy December 13, 2017

here is the command which worked for me:

ssh root@ipaddress "dd if=/dev/vda1 | gzip -1 -" | dd of=image.gz

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  • filmscoringacademy December 16, 2017

    And does that also end up capturing the state of your database and contents as well?

  • kurotsuki August 7, 2018

    Any way to restore it to a newly created droplet?

  • mikejakubik September 10, 2018

    You will get inconsistent data using this method, and restoration will be a pain in the ass. You're better off using tar or something similar.

  • Wibyo September 19, 2018

    Hi,

    sorry for this newbie question !

    how can i run it on my actual server with ssh ,

    im already connected to my ssh,

    but ssh root@myserverip that is ok for me

    but the part of dev/vda1
    how to know if my server partition name is the same

    • Wibyo September 19, 2018

      [root@***** ~]# ssh root@... "dd if=/dev/vda1 | gzip -1 -" | dd of=image.gz
      The authenticity of host '... (...)' can't be established.
      ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:0cBnluULKl+***********************************.
      ECDSA key fingerprint is MD5:9c:ac:2c:5a:42:48:d      *******************************
      Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
      Warning: Permanently added '... (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
      root@...'s password:

didierhm December 21, 2017

Anyone downloaded a droplet and installed on his local server, kinda a clone environment for testing?

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george4261098976ff39dc13ec May 1, 2018

This makes no sense...if someone hack the account and destroy all your backups there is no way to recover it. I don't know why they don't have this simple option to download the backups just for extra security.

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  • mikejakubik September 10, 2018

    They were probably focusing on security when they designed this. However, that shouldn't mean that you can't securely download this data.

kaldomains September 14, 2018

You can vote for it on this link. The idea was proposed 5 years ago and has over 6000 votes. Digital Ocean claim that they have been "gathering feedback" since 2015. I wonder how much feedback they need.

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