Defining Properties of Files That Compose the Backup

Defining the properties of the files that will be contained in the backup includes the following:

1. Specifying that archives with backup object contents should not be compressed.
2. Specifying that a prefix should be added to the names of the backup files.
3. Specifying that backup files should be split into parts of the specified size.

Specifying that archives with backup object contents should not be compressed

By default, Plesk saves backed up content to compressed .zip archives to save disk space when the backup is stored. However, restoring backups that contain compressed archives requires almost twice as much disk space as restoring those with uncompressed files. If you want to create your backups without compression, use the -z option in your backup command.

Specifying that a prefix should be added to the names of the backup files

In order to better distinguish files that were created during one backup session from another, pleskbackup adds a prefix to the backup file name. By default, it is backup, so every backup file name looks like backup_<file-name>.<ext>. The prefix in names of the files that compose a particular backup can be customized by using the --prefix option. The option's value will be added as a prefix to the names of files of the created backup.

For example, to create a backup of the server mail configuration so that all files in the backup have the prefix mail-friday:

pleskbackup server --only-mail --configuration --prefix="friday"

Specifying that backup files should be split into parts of the specified size

The pleskbackup utility is capable of splitting backup files into parts of a particular size, which is extremely useful in cases when the file size is critical. Such cases could include the following:

• if backups are burnt to DVDs, file size should not exceed approximately 4 Gbytes
• if backups are stored on the FAT32 file system, file size should not exceed approximately 4 Gbytes
• if backups are stored on FTP, the FTP server may have its own restrictions on the size of a single file transferred to the server

To make pleskbackup split the backup files to parts of a particular size, use the -s|--split option and specify the required size as the option value. For details on how to specify the size, refer to the section Backup Utility Commands and Options. The default value used by pleskbackup if no custom size is specified is 2 Gbytes. The utility numbers file parts created as a result of a split by adding numerical suffixes to the file names starting from .1.

For example, to back up a subscription and split backup files into parts of no more than 700 Mbytes:

pleskbackup domains-name example.com --only-hosting --split=700M