cPanel Remote Backup Documentation
This documentation is to help you configure your servers backup configuration for remote destinations. While this guide is intended to be paired with our remote storage solution, this guide can be used to implement other additional destinations as it covers the basic functionality of the remote destination system that cPanel has implemented.
More information about this implemented feature of cPanel can be found here: The Additional Destinations tab
If you need assistance setting up your remote backup configuration, please reach out to the Support Department and we’ll be glad to assist anyone under our managed services.
Please note that KnownHost recommends SFTP and RSYNC connections utilizing an SSH Key over Passwords, you can find how to do this at these two locations: KnownHost Generate SSH Key and cPanel generate SSH Key via WHM.
Utilizing SSH Keys for these connections does require ‘root’ access – as such this applies to VPS, Cloud and Dedicated servers.
Configuring for cPanel
Setting up your remote backup storage for cPanel is pretty straight-forward. cPanel is designed to be user-friendly accompanied with thorough documentation to explain the process. We’ll be going through the steps necessary to setup your storage as an ‘Additional Destination’ for cPanel’s backup system. A remote destination will allow you to generate backups to be used with your server at a remote location so that if you ever experience an incident, you’ll have something to fall back on.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is login to your servers cPanel WHM Interface via the ‘root’ user – this user is required to access the ‘Backup Configuration’ section of WHM.
You’ll access your WHM interface over one of the two following methods either by your hostname or your server’s IP address like so:How to access WHM
- https://host.domain.com:2087 (or http://host.domain.com:2086 if lacking SSL)
- https://your.ip.here:2087 (Will be presented with browser security warning, do bypass this warning as it is safe to do so)
Once you’ve successfully logged in you’ll want to access ‘Backup Configuration’ – you can do this by utilizing the left hand search bar and just type in “Backup” and it should show you “Backup Configuration” as part of the options.
Now that you’ve entered the “Backup Configuration” section of WHM – you’ll want to click the “Additional Destinations” tab at the top. This will bring you to the section of which we’ll be creating an additional destination for your remote backup solution,.
There are many options to choose from, each with their own benefits or drawbacks. See the following table we’ve put together
| Additional Destination | Used to specify locations in addition to the current backup path. |
| Amazon S3 | Requires a Amazon S3 Account, allows you to utilize Amazon S3 for remote destination. |
| Backblaze B2 | Requires a Backblaze account, allows you to utilize Backblaze B2 for remote destination. |
| Custom | Advanced. Allows entirely customizable solution via custom API’s and more. |
| FTP | Standard transport method with an FTP account. This method is unencrypted. (Not Recommended) |
| Google Drive | Requires a Google Drive account, allows you to utilize gdrive for remote destination. |
| rsync | Used as a transfer/transport method for backups. (Recommended) |
| S3 Compatible | Allows an Amazon S3-compatible provider to be used for remote destination. |
| SFTP | Secure transfer/transport method for backups. (Recommended) |
When using KnownHost’s remote storage solution, we recommend that you utilize SFTP or RSYNC as these both provide SSH Key access that prevents the requirement of passwords. As part of our Managed Services, KnownHost Support Staff will assist with this configuration.
For the sake of this documentation, we’ll simply be addressing the standard method of utilizing passwords for easy understanding.
As such for this configuration, despite using passwords we still recommend the ‘Additional Destination’ be set to SFTP, so we’ll use SFTP for the duration of this guide.
Once you’ve used the dropdown and selected “SFTP” –> click ‘Create New Destination”. You’ll be presented with the following information:
| Destination Name | Required — Enter a destination name for your backup files. This name appears in your destination table. |
| Transfer System Backups to this Destination | Select this checkbox to transfer system backups to this additional destination. To use this setting, you must also select the Back up System Files checkbox in the Backup Settings tab. |
| Backup Directory | Optional — Enter the directory path, relative to the account’s home directory, in which you wish to store backups. |
| Remote Host | Required – Enter the hostname or IP address of the remote server. |
| Port | Enter the port to use to communicate with the remote server. By default, SFTP destinations use port 22. |
| Username | Required — Enter the username of the account on the remote server. |
| Password Authentication | Password Authentication — Select this setting to use password-based authentication. |
| Remote Password | If you selected Password Authentication for the Authentication Type setting, enter the password for the account on the remote server in the Remote Password text box. |
| Timeout | Required — The maximum amount of time, in seconds, that you want the server to wait for a response from the remote server before it generates errors. You must enter a number between 30 and 300. |
Edit
If you’re utilizing KnownHost’s remote storage solution – you should have received an email with your account information presented like so:
New Account Information
Remote Backup Space GA
Login Details
Username: backups00000
Password: knownhostisthebest1337
Domain: backups00000.virtualserver1.com
SFTP/SSH Port: 22
FTP Port: 21This information is what you will be using to fill out the SFTP configuration for your additional destination, when applied to the forms it’d be like this:
Destination Name: remote backups
Remote Host: backups00000.virtualserver1.com
Port: 22
Username: backups00000
Password: knownhostisthebest1337
Timeout: It's okay to leave this defaultOnce your configuration is put in, check over it and make sure everything looks good – then click “Save and Validate” at the bottom. This option will check your credentials against the remote destination and ensure that it can properly login and access the remote destination, if successful you’ll get a green notification box that the configuration passed validation.
Congratulations, you’re now all set up with remote backups – do please reach out to us if you have any questions, concerns and or comments regarding this guide and/or our services! We’ll be more then happy to assist you!