How to Create Snapshots of Your Web Hosting

Snapshots automatically create a copy of your web hosting files at a regular interval. You can use these snapshots to rollback your website code to a previous version if needed.

Warning

  • Snapshots do not make a copy of your databases. If you would like to perform a regular copy of your databases, we recommend you perform an export, or launch a dump script via anacrontab.

  • A snapshot is stored on the very same disk as your volume, and it does not replace a backup policy with a real copy of your website files to a remote location.

Activating Snapshots

After you have selected the web hosting in question, click on the “Administration & Security” tab.

Next, click on the “Enable snapshots” button.

Once activated, we will create a total of 4 snapshots of your website files at specific times:

  • A daily snapshot kept for 24h

  • A daily snapshot kept for 48h

  • A weekly snapshot kept for 7 days

  • A weekly snapshot kept for 14 days

Restoring Snapshots

To restore your website files from a snapshot start by logging into your web hosting using sFTP.

Once you’re at the root of your web hosting’s disk browse to the “snapshot” directory.

Your snapshot directory’s contents will look something like this:

  • 123456789.daily (a daily snapshot)

  • 123456789.weekly (a weekly snapshot)

The number that you see before each directory is the unix timestamp. The most recent snapshot is the one with the highest number.

In order to restore the data, you need to copy the data to your local device from the remote folder. Then, upload them to the target directory. Alternatively, if your SFTP software allows you to copy/paste directly through their interface, you can copy and paste directly to the target directory.