Destinations Overview
A Backup destination serves as the storage location for your backup files (backup destinations can be remote or local). Below is a list and brief overview of each supported destination types so you can choose the most suitable destination for your specific needs or use case.
In general, it is almost always a best practice to make sure at least one copy of your server’s backups are located off-site (remote destination) in case of a disaster at your data center, home, or office.
Remote destinations are usually slower than local destinations to backup and restore from due to bandwidth requirements. With this in consideration, many clients choose to store at least one copy of backups locally and additional copies in at least one or more remote destinations.
Destination Types
| Destination Type | Backup Type | |||||||||||||||||
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| Local |
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| SSH |
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| FTP (Experimental) |
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| S3 Compatible |
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S3 (New Backup Engine) vs SSH (Rsync): See more information about how our new backup engine works at Destination Benchmarks.
JetBackup 5 currently supports 2 types of storage formats, depending on the Backup Destination you choose.
- Rsync-Based destinations (SSH, Local), utilize the file-level storage (file-level backups), which allows you to access your backups directly and conveniently from your destination in a human-readable format.
- S3-Compatible destinations such as Amazon S3, Wasabi, Google Cloud Storage, etc.. utilizes our new Backup Engine that is using object storage format for backups. This new storage format applies JetBackup's new Proprietary Backup structure that allows for more efficient backups, and incremental capabilities to ALL destinations.
Destination For
There are two different Destinations you can create at this time.
- Backup - Use the destination for configured Backup Jobs.
- Clone - Use the destination for configured Clone Jobs.
Please Note: Clone destinations can only be created using the SSH Destination Plugin at this time. When configuring the SSH Destination for a Clone Destination you will not need to set a Backup Directory and a ROOT private key or ROOT credentials are required.
Backup Types
- Accounts - Backup Account Data from each account that you choose to include.
- Directories - Select system files/folders to backup to the destinations.
Backup Structures
Incremental - Backup new and changed data since the previous backup.
"Point-In-Time" incremental backups - For retentions on incremental backups, JetBackup generates "point-in-time" incremental backups that use as little space as possible (using hard links). For example, on a 2GB DirectAdmin account with 30-day backup retention, it will only consume 2GB + 30 Days worth of new/changed data. (**For databases, JetBackup generates a full dump of the database for each incremental backup).
Archived - Backup data in an uncompressed archive (.tar file format). Uncompressed backups are faster to generate but require more space.
Compressed - Backup data in a compressed archive (.tar.gz file format). Compressed backups use less space but take more time to generate.
Create New Destination
To create a new destination, click on "+ Create new Destination". Please check the Destination Type you would like to create for specific instructions.
Local Destination example:
Destination Settings
Click on the preferred destination listed in the Destinations section to expand and view the available destination settings.
Enable/Disable Destination
Click on Disable/Enable Destination to Disable/Enable your destination.
Manage Destination
Click on Manage Destination to modify your destination settings.
Please note that when editing your destination, JetBackup will try reverting to your previous destination configuration automatically if the destination fails to register with the new configuration.
Browse Destination Files
Browse files and folders stored in your destination.
Snapshots Visibility
This option allows you to set the visibility of backups/snapshots stored on the destination. When disabled, the backups from the destination will not be visible to your end-users.
Export JB Config
This option enables "JetBackup configuration" backup(s) which is required to perform critical JetBackup operations such as "Disaster Recovery" and recovering from database corruption.
"JetBackup configuration" backup(s) are lightweight, encrypted, and executed daily for up to 7 retained snapshots. The total compressed size of the JB Config Export Backups may vary depending on the number of backups indexed by JetBackup at the time the JB Config Export was generated. For more information, please see JetBackup Configuration Backup Job.
This backup is encrypted using the Master Encryption Key and is highly recommended to keep the key on a secure remote location (such as a password management software).
Please note that enabling Export JB Config will not execute the JetBackup configuration backup on demand. Please wait a minimum of 24 hours to ensure that JB config backup has executed.
Validate Destination
Validating a Destination checks whether your destination is valid and reachable.
Reindex Destination
Reindexing resyncs data between your server and the destination. Useful in case of adding a destination that already contains JetBackup generated backups or if changes in the destination were made manually.
Delete Destination
Deletes your destination permanently. Make sure that no backup jobs are assigned to the destination in order to delete it.
Additional Information
Object Storage and the S3 protocol
Object storage is a type of storage where data is stored as objects rather than blocks. This concept is useful for data backup, archiving, and scalability for high-load environments.
Objects are the entities of data storage in S3 buckets. S3 objects are comprised of three main parts; the content of the object (data contained in the object includiing directories or files), the unique object identifier (Unique string used to identify the item within the bucket.), and metadata. Metadata contains information such as name, size, date, security attributes, content type, and URL. Each object has an ACL or Access Control list which dictates who is permitted access to the object. S3 object storage has distinct advantages such as allowing you to avoid network bottlenecks as well as a high degree of scalability and data security.
For more information regarding the differences between Object Storage and a Traditional File System in terms of how JetBackup 5 stores your data, please click HERE.
Commonly used binaries for Local/SSH
JetBackup 5 uses rsync to generate backups and transfer them to Local and SSH Destinations. When adding these types of destinations please ensure that both the source server and destination server are able to run standard Linux commands like the following:
- mkdir
- ls
- stat
- rm
- rsync
- mv
- cd
- pwd
Please note: This is NOT an exhaustive list of required binaries.
How To Secure Local Backup Storage
Disk Info
Disabled Destinations
Invalid characters and file permissions
JetBackup can't restore files and/or directories with certain special characters or permissions.
For a list of recommended special characters and file permissions to avoid, please visit: Characters to Avoid when naming Files and Folders