Server Backups

If your data is important to you (which it probably is) we always recommend having at least one backup system in place to protect from a bad deployment, security incidents, or hardware faults. What backups are available to you and their price depends on the product you have with us, how much data you have and the required retention policy. Below we provide a brief overview but you can always get in touch if you have more questions.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Backups

Our virtual server products have a completely automated system available that will take a snapshot of your server each day and store it in a secure offsite location - usually for 14 days (depending on the product and plan).

Please note that these backups are not on by default but can be enabled through our Control Panel. You can do this by going to the Servers module and clicking "On" in the Backups column. This will tell you the cost for backing up your server before confirming.

Viewing / Creating New Backups

For servers that are part of our newest virtualisation platform, you can view your available backups as well as take a new one. Head to your server in the Control Panel and click on the Backups tab at the top of the screen.

When creating a new backup, you can supply some additional notes as to why you're creating it, as well as choose how long you want it to be retained for (expiry). Please note that the backup will be deleted shortly after its expiry is reached.

Restoring a backup

Server backups can be restored from the Control Panel. Click on the three dots on the right-hand side of the relevant backup and select Restore.

For safety, you can choose to take a fresh backup of your server's current state before beginning the restore process. This new backup will be labelled Pre Restore Backup and lasts for 48 hours before being deleted.

If you'd like the restore to kick-off immediately, you can skip taking this backup. You can get an idea of how long the backup will delay your restore by checking the Duration column in your list of existing backups. Please note these times can vary however.

Live Restores

Backup restores are completed "live". Your server will be shutdown at the start of the restore process, and shortly after seeing the following message in the Control Panel it will be online again:

At this stage your server has been restored to the selected backup, but it takes some time for all the files to be synced from the remote backup to your server. All of your services (websites, databases etc.) should continue to function as normal but with reduced performance. You can also access your server via SSH/RDP if needed.

When a file is accessed that has not been synced from the backup yet - either by system processes or by a user - that file is prioritised and loaded in-place. From a user's perspective, this appears as a slight delay before the file can be used.

Custom Backup Frequency / Retention

By default, your server is backed up every 24 hours and we retain each backup for 2 weeks. If you need your backups to be taken more frequently (for example hourly instead of daily), or need to hold onto your backups for a longer period of time, then please get in touch with us.

Backup Durations

When a new backup is being created, only content which has been newly added to the server since the last backup needs to be accounted for. This is why the amount of time it takes for a backup to complete can sometimes be quite short, even for larger servers.

This also means that the first backup for your server will take longer to complete than subsequent ones. Note: there are a few actions that trigger a full backup to be taken again, such as rebooting your server or resizing disks.

Legacy VPS Platform

If you have a virtual server provisioned before 2025, it is likely running on our legacy virtualisation platform which doesn't support the features above. If you need an on-demand backup, or a backup restored please get in touch.

Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Backups

One of the key features of our VDS product is the large dedicated disks the servers come with. While this amount of storage is useful it does make it harder to backup the servers effectively. For this reason we don't have a standard backup product available and instead customise the best option on a case by case basis. Simply get in touch with the team and we will be happy to walk you through the best option for you.

Other Products

Some of our other products such as Cloud Containers have backups included as part of the plan price, while others require custom solutions. If you're not sure if your servers are backed up or want to find out the best solution please get in touch.