Site Backups In xCloud

Site backups protect your data from accidental deletion, server issues, and cyberattacks. Regular backups help you restore your site quickly and reduce downtime.

Each site can back up to its own server (local) and to up to two remote storage providers, each with its own schedule and retention. Retention always keeps a destination’s newest backup. See Back up to two remote destinations and Choose a retention period.

With xCloud, you get two types of backup options:

• Site Backup:
  Supports both Remote Backup (DigitalOcean, Vultr, S3-compatible providers) and Local Backup (stored on the same server). You can choose full or incremental backups.
• Server Backup:
  Available for xCloud Managed, xCloud Provider, White Label Vultr and xCloud Leaseweb servers, and for servers on your own Vultr account. It costs an additional 20% of the server price on servers billed by xCloud; on a server in your own Vultr account, Vultr bills you directly. This backup covers the entire server instead of individual sites.

xCloud also offers full backup and incremental backup options for each. Follow this guide to learn how to configure site backups in xCloud.

Step 1: Open Storage Provider Page

Before getting started, you need to select a storage provider. To do that, visit your xCloud hosting dashboard and navigate to Backup → Backup Settings.

Now, click the ‘Manage Your Storage Provider’ from the Backup Settings. It will take you to the Storage Provider integration page.

You can also go to ‘My Profile’ and navigate to Integrations → Storage Provider from the left navigation, as shown below.

Step 2: Choose A Storage Provider

Now, you need to choose a storage provider for storing your backup files. Click the ‘Add New Provider’ button from the Storage Provider page. You will get a prompt to select a provider and input the necessary details.

Note: storage providers Contabo and Min.io are currently not supported within the xCloud platform.

DigitalOcean Spaces

If your storage provider is DigitalOcean, select DigitalOcean Spaces from the providers list. Insert your Bucket Name, Access Key ID and Secret Key, and add the Endpoint URL. After that, hit the ‘Submit’ button.

To get Space name, Access Key ID, Secret key from DigitalOcean, open your account dashboard and go to ‘Spaces Object Storage.’ Hit the ‘Create Spaces Bucket‘ button to create a new bucket.

Now, set a unique bucket name in the field that says ‘Choose a unique Spaces Bucket name‘ and hit the ‘Create a Spaces Bucket‘ button.

Once done, navigate to API → Spaces Keys from the DigitalOcean dashboard. Hit the ‘Generate New Key’ button to generate and copy your necessary keys.

Once you are done adding the necessary information and hit the ‘Submit’ button, your DigitalOcean space will be integrated instantly.

Vultr Object Storage

If your storage provider is Vultr, select Vultr Object Storage from the providers list. Set your Bucket Name, input Access Key ID and Secret Key, and add Endpoint URL. After that, hit the ‘Submit’ button.

To get Space name, Access Key ID, Secret key from Vultr, open your Vultr account dashboard and navigate to Cloud Storage → Object Storage.

Hit the Storage Name to manage the Object Storage. Here, you will need to open the Buckets tab and create a new bucket.

To create a new bucket, set a ‘Bucket Name‘ and hit the ‘Create Bucket‘ button at the bottom of the page.

After creating the bucket, you will find the Hostname, Secret Key, and Access key on the ‘Overview‘ tab.

After providing the necessary information, hit the ‘Submit’ button, the Vultr Object Storage will be integrated into xCloud.

[Note: Please make sure you have a bucket created before trying to integrate it into xCloud.]

Step 3: Configure Site Backup Setting

Once the integration process is done, open your site and go to Site Backup → Backup Settings. The page has two tabs: Remote Backup for storage providers and Local Backup for the server itself.

Back up to two remote destinations

A site can back up to up to two remote storage providers as well as the local destination. Each remote destination has its own schedule and its own retention, so you can, for example, keep daily backups in one bucket for 30 days and weekly backups in another bucket for 90 days.

On the Remote Backup tab, each destination appears as a pill showing its provider, bucket, frequency and retention. The counter on the right shows how many of the two remote destinations the site uses. Select a pill to edit that destination, then choose its Bucket and options below.

To add a second destination, select Add another destination, choose a different storage provider under Bucket, set its options and select Save Settings. The pill only appears while the site has fewer than two remote destinations and you have a storage provider that is not used yet.

Two destinations cannot point at the same bucket. If you pick a provider that already stores this site’s backups, xCloud refuses the save, because the two destinations would delete each other’s backups.

If the site has no remote destination of its own yet, the form is prefilled from your team or server backup defaults, with a note saying so. Saving creates the site’s own settings.

Choose what to back up

Next you will get two options, ‘Database Backup’ and ‘Files Backup’. Enable either one, or keep both enabled, to back up the database and files as you prefer.

Now, there may be files or folders that you do not want to include in your file backups. You can exclude those files from backing up. You will find the box below the ‘File Backup’ field, as shown below.

For example, if you’re using any media plugin to offload your Media Library to Amazon S3 and have versioning enabled on your bucket, there’s really no reason to include those files in your daily backups. In this case, excluding your uploads folder could be a good choice. To add just write the path into the ‘Exclude Paths’ section:

/files/wp-content/uploads

Similarly, if you’re using Composer to manage PHP dependencies, it’s likely that you don’t want to include the root vendor directory in your backups.

/files/vendor

There are more paths like below, that you can exclude from the backup list.

wp-admin
wp-includes
wp-content/cache
wp-content/plugins
wp-content/updraft

You can just copy and paste the paths here and you are good to go with excluding specific paths that you do not want to include in the backup.

Choose a retention period

You can also schedule Automatic Backup and set Backup Retention (formerly called Automatic Delete) for each destination. For automatic backup, select the backup frequency: Every 12 Hours, Daily, Weekly or Monthly.

Under Backup Retention, choose how long to keep backups in Delete backups older than: 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, 30 days, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months or 1 year. Select Custom to enter any number of days up to 3650.

A daily cleanup removes backups older than the retention period, but it always keeps the newest backup of each destination, even when that backup is older than the retention period. If backups stop running, the last good one is never aged out. If the retention period is shorter than the backup schedule, for example weekly backups with 3 days of retention, the form warns that usually only the newest backup will be kept.

Select Save Settings to save the destination you are editing.

Step 4: Take Your Backup

To take a new backup of your site or to view previous backups, go to Backup → Previous Backups. You will see two options: Local Backup and Remote Backup for your website.

You can also view an overview of the Backup Summary and Backup Status Overview for both local and remote backups. This includes details such as Total Backup Size, File Backup Size, Database Backup Size, Backup Status, Next Backup, and more.

Go to the ‘Remote Backup’ or ‘Local Backup’ tab based on your preference, select the destination if the site has more than one, and click the ‘Backup Now’ button, then choose the ‘Full Backup’ or ‘Incremental Backup’ to create an instant backup of your site. The backup goes to the selected destination only.

xCloud will take a few seconds to create a backup of your site. It will export a compressed version of your current site and an SQL file in your bucket, which can be restored automatically from xCloud or downloaded from your storage provider later.

Once done, you can see your backups here with the details and options. You can use the ‘Restore’ button to restore your site with a backup version. You can also check the backup size , date of the backup and destination at a glance of each of the backup.Note: While deleting a site you will be asked whether you want to remove Local Backups too. We are not removing Remote Backups now while deleting a site.

You can also add a custom note to your site backups to help keep track of why each backup was taken or to add quick notes that make it easier to find the right version when you need it most.

Simply click on the ‘Note’ section of each backup and enter your note. The note will be saved and updated instantly.

You can also click the ‘Delete’ button to remove your backups from xCloud. To delete multiple backups, select the checkboxes beside each backup and then click Delete.

Note: The latest full backup cannot be deleted because it is required to create a new incremental backup. 

That is how easily you can create site backups with xCloud. Site Backup and restore both now support optional file-only, database-only, or full backups instead of always backing up both.

Switch destinations in Previous Backups

When the site has two remote destinations, the Remote Backup tab shows a pill for each one. Select a destination to see its backups, sizes and status. The Settings button opens the settings of the destination you are viewing.

Backup Now on this page runs for the destination you have selected, so a manual backup goes to that destination only.

Remove a backup destination

To stop backing up to a storage provider, open Backup Settings, select the destination’s pill on the Remote Backup tab and select Remove Destination.

Choose what happens to the backups already stored there:

Choice	What happens
Leave Also delete the backups already stored there unticked	Scheduled backups to that destination stop. The stored backups stay in your bucket and in the site’s backup history, and they come back if you add the same provider again.
Tick Also delete the backups already stored there	xCloud deletes the stored backups from the provider, then removes the destination. While this runs, the pill shows Removing… and the destination cannot be edited. If the provider cannot confirm the delete, the destination comes back unchanged so nothing is lost silently.

Select Remove destination to confirm.

Connect Any S3-Compatible Storage Provider

In addition to the built-in providers, xCloud supports integration with any S3-compatible storage service. Easily connect:

• Amazon S3
• MinIO
• Wasabi
• Backblaze B2
• Any other S3-compatible object storage

Download S3 Storage Backup

With xCloud, you can now download S3 storage backups directly from your dashboard. Easily access and save your remote S3 storage backups hassle-free.

Learn how to access all site files via SFTP with the root user here: 

👉 Accessing All Site Files via SFTP with Root User in xCloud

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Download Local Site Backup?

Local backups are stored on the server in the following directory:

Copy

/root/.backup

These backups cannot be accessed through HTTP requests, so they are not available for direct download from the xCloud app.

To download a local site backup, you must manually access the server using SFTP and retrieve the backup files from the directory above.

If deleting sites hasn’t freed up disk space, see Where Did My Disk Space Go? — local backups are a common cause, since they aren’t removed unless you turn on Delete Local Backups when deleting a site.

How many remote backup destinations can a site have?

Up to two storage providers per site, in addition to the local backup on the server. Each destination has its own schedule and retention.

Does Backup Retention ever delete my only backup?

No. Retention never deletes the newest backup of a destination, even when it is older than the retention period, so the last good backup survives if backups stop.

What happens to stored backups when I remove a destination?

By default they stay in your storage and in the site’s backup history, and they come back if you add the same provider again. Tick Also delete the backups already stored there to delete them permanently.

Still stuck? Contact our support team for any of your queries