Plesk provides opportunities for backing up and restoring nearly all hosting data, which includes its major objects: administrator account, settings for Plesk-managed services, reseller accounts, customer accounts, subscriptions, websites, databases and mail accounts. These backup objects are organized into a hierarchy where parent object is always an owner of its children. The hierarchy comprises of four levels: server, resellers, customers and subscriptions. The levels are such that a higher level includes objects on the lower levels but a lower level is completely separated from the higher objects.

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You can create either a full or a partial backup. A full backup is the highest-level backup, it includes all data related to a Plesk installation. A partial backup includes only backup objects you need, of any of the levels. For information on available options when creating a partial backup, refer to the section Defining Data for Backup.

Restoring a backup, in turn, can also be either full or partial. Full restoration recovers all data contained in a backup, and partial recovers a part. For information on available options when restoring data from backup, refer to the Defining Objects for Restoration section.

Each backup object includes the following:

  • Configuration defines properties of the backup object and its descendants.
  • Content contains binary data related only to the backup object (website content and content of mailboxes).

This table shows what data (configuration and content) are related to each backup object.

Backup Object Type Configuration Content Not included into backup
server

This backup level includes the following:

  • Administrator’s information.
  • Presence Builder settings.
  • IP addresses.
  • Database server settings.
  • DNS settings.
  • Mail server settings.
  • Antivirus and spam protection settings.
  • SSL/TLS certificates.
  • Reseller plans, hosting plans, and add-on plans.
  • Information about administrator’s subscriptions, reseller accounts, customer accounts and websites.
  • Information about user roles.
  • Information about additional users who can access Customer Panel.
  • Information about mail accounts and individual settings for protection from spam and viruses .
  • Site isolation settings.
  • Settings for notification on system events.
 License keys for Plesk, virtual host templates, website content, error documents, log files, and content of mailboxes.

This backup level does not include the following:

  • Backup settings (FTP settings, scheduled backup, global backup settings)
  • Firewall rules
  • Additional Administrator Accounts
  • Selected Mail/DNS server
  • DB servers
  • Installed extensions and their settings
  • Plesk internal settings: /admin/conf/panel.ini
  • PHP interpreter settings: /admin/conf/php.ini
  • Secret key that can be used in XML API calls for authentication in Plesk: /etc/psa/private/secret_key
reseller

This backup level includes the following:

  • Reseller information.
  • Reseller’s hosting plans.
  • Resource allotments and permissions for operations in Plesk.
  • Allocated IP addresses.
  • Information about customer accounts, subscriptions, and websites with DNS settings.
  • Information about user roles.
  • Information about additional users who can access Customer Panel.
  • Information about mail accounts and individual settings for protection from spam and viruses.
 Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

This backup level does not include the following:

  • Backup settings (FTP settings, scheduled backup)
customer

This backup level includes the following:

  • Customer information.
  • Hosting plans to which the customer is subscribed.
  • Resource allotments and permissions for operations in Customer Panel.
  • IP addresses used by customer’s subscriptions.
  • Information about websites with DNS settings.
  • Information about user roles.
  • Information about additional users who can access Customer Panel.
  • Information about mail accounts and individual settings for protection from spam and viruses.
 Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

This backup level does not include the following:

  • Backup settings (FTP settings, scheduled backup)
subscription

This backup level includes the following:

  • Information about a subscription, its owner and associated hosting plan.
  • IP addresses allocated to the subscription.
  • Resource allotments and permissions for operations in Customer Panel.
  • Information about websites with DNS settings.
  • Information about mail accounts and individual settings for protection from spam and viruses.
 Website content, error documents, log files, content of mailboxes.

This backup level does not include the following:

  • Backup settings (FTP settings, scheduled backup)