When I move from an old VPS using Virtualmin to a new one, I’ve been backing up the sites locally on the old VPS and using FTP to download them. I then re-upload the backup files to the new VPS and restore them. This is terribly time-consuming.
I don’t usually run an FTP server in the Virtualmin installation due to security concerns, but it struck me that perhaps there is a way to backup the old VPS to a folder on the new VPS via FTP. If this is the standard way to move to a different VPS, and as usual I am just slow on the uptake, I’d appreciate it if anyone could point me to a protocol for setting up an FTP account on the new VPS and using it for backup from the old.
In Virtualmin’s backup options, you always have the option of having the backups automatically copied to a remote server.
The most secure way to do that would be via SSH.
You can do that by going into Backup and Restore -> Backup Virtual Server, and in there, you can set “Backup destinations” to “SSH”, which will have it copy all your backups to the server you specify.
These instructions here for migrating to a new server describe an alternate way of copying backups to your new server:
Thank you for the help and the reference. I didn’t realize that you could use the other server directly through SSH. It is sure simpler to do things that way, and faster. That is a great tip too in the migration document to set the time to live to one hour before migrating.