Tips for backing up to Amazon's S3 Service

[missionaryman]

Hi all,

I love this forum! I find loads of answers here, and people are pretty-good at answering my (sometimes dumb) questions, so I thought I'd share back with something I've learned recently. How to backup your backups to Amazon's S3:

1) Obviously, get yourself an S3 account (free for the first year!) and get your Access Key Id and Access Key. Click here for more details: http://aws.amazon.com/
2) On S3, make a unique bucket (folder) name for your backups. For this example, I'll call mine vesta-backups.
3) Install s3cmd (website here: http://s3tools.org/s3cmd) on your server. I use Ubuntu, so the command is sudo apt-get install s3cmd.
REALLY IMPORTANT PART:
4) You'll need to configure s3cmd so that it works with the VestaCP admin account. Either make sure you've SSHed in to your server as admin, or su admin to ensure you're configuring the right user. VestaCP turns off SSH access for admin by default, so be sure to edit the admin user settings to allow SSH access, even if just for this operation. If you configure the wrong user, the backup process will not work. Be warned!
5) type s3cmd --configure and enter all the requested details. You'll need to enter your S3 credentials and these are long! use <shift><insert> to paste into a terminal window.
6) s3cmd will test the connection and confirm success.
7) In /home/admin, create the following file: cron-s3sync.txt and past the following in:

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# SYNC FILES
#!/bin/bash
s3cmd sync  --delete-removed -m "application/x-tar" /home/backup/ s3://vesta-backups/ >/dev/null 2>&1

8) Obviously, make sure the s3://vesta-backups is the name of your created S3 bucket. All the code from > onwards stops any reporting. Remove this and you'll receive emails regarding the process, either success or failure.
9) change the attributes of the cron-sync.txt to allow file execution: chmod 755 cron-sync.txt
10) Finally, create a CRON job in VestaCP that points to /home/admin/cron-s3sync.txt

When testing, remove the code from > to allow email reporting on success or failure, then change the CRON time to your current time +1 minute and check that everything backs up correctly. The actual code syncs the backup folder on VestaCP with S3 rather than just adding the latest backup. If you wanted different functionality, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Hope that helps!

Adam

[skurudo]

Nice manual, good work! ;-)

I have indiscreet intimate question - how much is the fish? ;-) In reality how much s3 cost for user? xxx gb = price.

[tjebbeke]

Nice manual, good work! ;-)

I have indiscreet intimate question - how much is the fish? ;-) In reality how much s3 cost for user? xxx gb = price.

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

0.01$ - 0.03$ /GB /month

[missionaryman]

From http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

AWS Free Usage Tier*

As part of the AWS Free Usage Tier, you can get started with Amazon S3 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon S3 standard storage, 20,000 Get Requests, 2,000 Put Requests, and 15GB of data transfer out each month for one year.

[pandabb]

Hello Sir, Thanks for this tutorial.

What if i want to backup multiple different users? My Admin account has no webdomains i created seperate users for each domain.

[missionaryman]

This tutorial shows you how to copy the VestaCP backups generated by the control panel to Amazon's S3 service. It doesn't cover how to configure the VestaCP backup service.

[hafeezksa]

Is there way to keep backup to Dropbox?

[skurudo]

Is there way to keep backup to Dropbox?

There is a way:
http://buildcontext.com/blog/2012/dropb ... ctive-sync
http://www.howopensource.com/2014/09/si ... o-dropbox/

Official guide:
http://www.dropboxwiki.com/tips-and-tri ... erface-cli

[asixja]

One question.
I have successfully installed all the s3.
I have to put in the SSH panel controls as follows:

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s3cmd sync --recursive/home/backup/ s3://vesta-backup

successfully migrate files on Amazon

I tried to add s3cmd Cronn direct command

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s3cmd sync --recursive/home/backup/ s3://vesta-backup

and I put refresh every minute (that I tested)

And then the email I keep getting this error:

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ERROR: /home/admin/.s3cfg: None
ERROR: Configuration file not available.
ERROR: Consider using --configure parameter to create one.

I tried to create a file according to your instructions "cron-s3sync.txt" and I put it in the /home/admin/ and in Cron put this

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/home/admin/cron-s3sync.txt

But then I get the same error:

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ERROR: /home/admin/.s3cfg: None
ERROR: Configuration file not available.
ERROR: Consider using --configure parameter to create one.

I tried that and I bet .s3cfg directly to "/home/admin/" but then does not work Cron

What do you suggest to me?

[Nacho]

Hi guys, do you have info about backups to amazon glacier, supposed to be a lot cheaper and now you can get files quicker than before. Thanks in advance.