Backing Up A Linux Server

Having been notified by go-daddy that all my vhost servers were going to need to be rebuilt ( what a major PAIN!), I decided the time had come to move to a dedicated server. Part of this process was to create a back-up archive of the important parts of the server. To archive all my web data I simply create a tar archive of my vhosts directory.

tar cvzf mybackup.tar vhosts/

Then I ftp'd the archive to my local PC for transfer onto CD. It is important to remove all unnecessary files to reduce the size of the archive. If your archive is too large it will become virtually unusable.  If the resulting archive is still too large then split the backup into smaller parts.