Beta of peer-to-peer Nextcloud Backup app now available for testing!

S3, and any other external storage app service, are supported.

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Ah cool. So then it uses the External Storage Support app to connect to the backup destination. Thanks for the info :slight_smile:

The uploading process have a retry-on-fail, meaning that even if the remote instance goes not available during the upload, the uploading process will just try again later and finish its work.

But I understand your concern, smart people will just add a .nobackup files at the root of their folder that contains useless data like movies :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I did read it. Assuming it must be rsync and would appreciate clarification. Cheers!

@just the data transfer is using Nextcloud’s API and require the External Storage App

If I not mistaken it could support the two scenarios discussed in Clone Nextcloud

  • cloning
  • synced instances (privat one <–> public / DMZ one) but only manage the private one

@wwe sorry, I have not seen your post earlier!

We are on the same track with the same objective and we both know that :slight_smile:
I never took any of your advice seriously as a negative or agressive comment

I will have a look to add some example use case in the documentation.
As an alternate solution, when facing huge data collection and small internet connection, it might be doable, and simple enough, to use your workstation as an external storage.

If you configure your workstation so that your Nextcloud can access one of the folder/harddrive; even on Windows you can find a simple way to run an ftpd.
The result would be that if your workstation is running, the Backup App will upload your backups on it. If your workstation is not running, the Backup App will try again later.

Note: fun thing, few months ago, before working on this app, I was looking for a way to detect/list USB device when plugged on the server. Could be fun to automatically store your backup on an external drive that you plug from time to time…

No, I did not have the right wording, I will fix this. Thanks!

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@packElend Yes, when restoring a backup, you can rearrange the path for the extraction of each data pack (nextcloud, apps, datadirectory, …) and the localisation of the database. The backup process will also update the config/config.php to fit the new location.
Meaning that you do not even need to move the backups files and using the ./occ command from one instance, you can easily create one or multiple clones.

You can use the app to migrate your nextcloud from a container/vm to an other setup.

From the documentation:

However, from what I understood from the request from the discussion your linked, Just doing a backup before upgrading seems enough

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my idea is that it would even allow a life-sync, which would be an extension of the peer-to-peer Nextcloud Backup app.

As most of the code is already in this app, it would be great if that app could be extended or another app build upon it that helps in the following scenario:

  1. primary NC instance in your private LAN, you have all your files there and a bunch of apps running. There are files you don’t want to see be available from the www in case the NC instance get compromised.
  2. secondary, public, NC instance, which is located in your DMZ or hosted by NC itself or whoever. This contains files and apps you want to access when you are away or share with others. It could be a read-only clone of your primary NC but with reduced content. You may want friends to upload things as well or change e.g. tasks in the task app using the secondary NC, so it would be welcome if sync would two way.

Based on the description of nextcloud/backup: Backup now. Restore later. (github.com) I dare to say that would be feasible reusing most of the code of this app.

Yeah, no, the app can do fun thing, but I would not use the backup app or its code for something like that.

And the asynchronous 2 way sync between each instance will be a mess to implement.

If you want to have 2 instances, just federated-share the files from the private one to the public one.

Thank you for your feedback. From this discussion I learned the app seems to work in a way I would expect it. majority of critics is caused by the marketing text pointing out backup to another NC instance as preferred/only way for backup - which I don’t expect to work well in the wild because of storage pressure on the destination instance and internet bandwidth…

  • sending backups to every kind of NC supported external storage sounds perfect architecture for me (as you use existing capabilities, don’t reinvent the wheel and improve with the product)
  • running delta backups is good as you can restore it fast ( I use restic so this how I like the backup - there is backup storage which contains multiple “snapshots” - the drawback your backup is proprietary and could only be restored using the original program )

As the program clearly address private users (professionals already have their backup tools/strategy) it would be great to provide simple use-case when this app is useful and when it doesn’t perform well (in terms of sizing, backup times and recovery tasks).

I’m happy with my backup solution so far but I will definitely test your app once it is available in the official store (with my preferred docker setup is little hard to use beta versions…)

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Started with the same thought but that would exclude app setting or things what stored in the database only, such as contacts

Well, with the Backup App, you can migrate your setup out of your docker in a blink of an eye !

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Problem with backup solutions, everyone has very specific ideas to do it properly. It nice that they try to provide a solution that integrates well with the NC interface.

If you have your preferred backup software, or you want to use other features (copy on write filesystems to do backups without maintenance mode, …) that you can’t expect everybody to use, you can still keep your backup method. Or have an additional one.

Exactly. Nextcloud Backup wasn’t designed to replace existing backup solutions, but to offer something super simple and basic for less technical Nextcloud users. @Cult did a pretty amazing job and the app can do more than we even expected him to pull off (heck several of our other engineers said it would not be possible to do at all) but if you have tens of terrabytes of data you might simply want to use another tool.

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full ack! this is definitely true. It makes absolutely no sense to hit every possible wish - in opposite KISS - keep it stupid simple is best way to solid enterprise-grade software. Designing internal Nextcloud (any application) backup solution I would recommend to rely on functions/methods natively available inside of the software (or added by your own package) - from the docs and discussion here this is the case!

definitely a great idea - there is nothing more important then backup… it’s a shame this was not implemented before… but as I pointed out before: the super simple approach to send your whole backup to another NC instance over your home DSL connection doesn’t work for majority of the users… for some reason other perfectly valid (and in my eyes preferred) scenarios for this target group like backup to local workstation were not mentioned in news message…

It can and it should! In fact I absolutely see the potential to replace many own-crafted, buggy and unreliable backup solutions scripts by this integrated, easy to use application.

Rom wasn’t build on one day - knowing the major pain-points like maintenance mode, temporary storage amount and long transfer times on slow connections one might improve over time and cover more requirements…

One more time

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Hey Guys,
i want to move my Nextcloud to a other VPS Provider. Can i use these solution to Backup my instance, Install a empty Nextcloud Instance on the new VPS Provider and Restore the Backup with this solution? Or should i do a manual Backup from web/DB/data?
Thanks.
Greets from Germany.

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Hi @Bischi welcome in the forum. Please read the rules and use search function - lot of questions have been answered already. In this case just read the full topic, chances are high the answer is there!!

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You want to do what the backup solution is supposed to do. However, keep in mind that it is a beta version in testing. So do an additional backup to not lose any of your data, then you can give it a try to move the setup and if you encounter problems, let the developers know about the problems…

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Yes, the only condition is that you cannot migrate from one type of database to another (ie. mysql to postgres)

Documentation is not complete, but you might find some descent hint on the repository

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