How to backup droplet/whole server to my own storage?

Posted on August 9, 2018

Hello, I’m aware that DO offer snapshots and backups. But are still stored by DO. I would also would like to be able to store my own backup.

What’s the best solution to backup my whole (ubuntu) droplet, for example save to my own NAS? Ideally it would be incremental as a snapshot. A solution that could restore the droplet.

Thanks for any advice.

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jarland

August 9, 2018

Hello friend!

Excellent question. While external backups cannot be as easily restored as our snapshots/backups, you should always keep copies of your data off site just in case.

Personally I would use rsync, and I have a guide for that: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-rsync-to-sync-local-and-remote-directories-on-a-vps

There are easily hundreds of ways to go about this, if not more, but rsync is always a favorite of mine for it’s excessive simplicity. Honestly, a raspberry pi hooked up to an external drive sitting on a shelf in the house could do this for you. Set a cron job and let it do it’s thing :)

Kind Regards, Jarland

Dev6

June 30, 2019

Mount the / folder using sshfs. Then, dd to make an exact copy.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh

https://opensource.com/article/18/7/how-use-dd-linux

Simon Bennett

November 27, 2020

This is a use case that some of the customers at SnapShooter use to get their droplet data within there own control.

https://twitter.com/alexjustesen/status/1327724259825885193

https://min.io/ Will allow you to host an S3 compatible storage container at on your own storage. You might find that your NAS will support it out the box. If you make this public-facing you are then free to use awscli or what we prefer rclone to copy your data locally.

At SnapShooter we enable just this setup for Server/Droplet File Backups We have a free plan for one backup daily or if you want help setting it up yourself just let me know.

Regards

Simon CEO SnapShooter