RimuHosting run backups of each VPS once a week. We try to keep 2 copies of the backup. So a copy from a week ago and another from two weeks ago.
To do this we pause the VPS, copy its file system, then resume the VPS.
We pause the VPS so that its filesystem does not change during the backup. The 'pause' will not normally affect active network connections. e.g. if you have an ssh connection or an httpd connection to the server it is not normally broken.
The backup process does _not_ require the server to be restarted.
On older servers using file-based images, the snapshot typically takes a minute or two per GB of data on the VPS file system (e.g. a typical backup would take 5-12 minutes). On the newer servers using LVM-based disks, the backup creates a snapshot, which only takes a second or so. If your VPS was set up after Spring 2009, it probably uses the latter method and is only paused for a second or so during the backup.
The backups run between 0500 and 0700 UTC. The backups run daily, but each VPS is backed up on just one particular day of the week (so the backup load is spread over a full week).
If you need your backup to run at a particular time/day let us know the day and hour of day in a support ticket (UTC) and we can set that up for you.
If you go to your VPS control panel (under VPS Management at https://rimuhosting.com/cp/vps/backup.jsp) it will indicate that a backup is in progress (in place of the regular reboot buttons). In the status section of this page, you can see when the "Next Backup Time" is scheduled. The VPS Control Log will normally also report the date/time of the last backup we had made.
The backup time is not (currently anyway) configurable by the end user. Just pop in a support ticket with the time (and timezone) when you want us to run the backup and we can change the time.
Backups use a lot of disk IO and so performance on the VPS' can be a bit slower than normal during these times.
If your VPS is not responding at about this time, check your VPS at http://rimuhosting.com/cp and see if the back message reports that the VPS backup has started but not finished.
If you do not wish your VPS to be part of this backup process, just pop in a support ticket and we will remove your VPS from our weekly backups. Note we offer an FTP server with space on it for you to run your own backups/restores as often as you like. See our Backupspace howto
If you ever lose any files (e.g. via a accidental 'rm -f / oops') then just mount up the backup image or pop in a support ticket if you would prefer we help out.
If you want to run a one off backup (e.g. prior to doing a dist upgrade or a complex install) then you can run a disk image snapshot using the VPS snapshot page.
The snapshots of the VPS images are stored on the same server as the VPS where they can be protected by a host server RAID-ed file system.
If you need an off-server copy of your data then you can use our backupspace server. Also check out our stand alone ftp/scp backup service over at bakop.com.
RimuHosting do not backup dedicated servers. You are able to run your own backups per our backupspace howto. Also if you have two dedicated servers with us then you can rsync copies of data you need between them.
If you have your dedicated server setup as a VPS host then we would be doing backups of those VPS instances.
When a backup runs, your VPS will be paused. You'll probbaly get errors like these in /var/log/messages:
SysRq : Emergency Sync
Emergency Sync complete
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