Hello,
i have a backup question.
About Virtual Servers, it’s all ok, i have the backups of all virtual servers set up correctly, and everything works perfectly.
I have a question about the backup of the entire Virtualmin/Webmin panel.
For example, if I needed to restore a backup of a virtual server, and if the machine was hacked, and I no longer have a way to access the Webmin/Virtualmin back-end, how would I access Webmin/Virtualmin to restore the virtual server backups?
Is there a way to make a complete backup of Virtualmin/Webmin too, so that in case of problems I can delete everything on machine and reinstall Virtualmin/Webmin from the saved backup and then restore the backups of one of the Virtual Servers?
I had thought of “Filesystem Backup”, choosing the Virtualmin and Webmin folders and doing daily backups for example.
Is this the correct way?
Or is there another way to keep Virtualmin and Webmin safe from possible problems/hacking?
Thank you.
No, I can’t imagine why you would want to restore a server with Virtualmin but without the virtual servers of Virtualmin.
If your server is hacked or has a problem, then you spin up a new server, install Virtualmin and then restore from your backups all the virtual servers of Virtualmin.
Because in this way I would lose my configuration of webmin/virtualmin. If I install them from 0 I could no longer do the automatic restore from the virtualmin menu, but I would have to upload the virtual servers backups manually from ftp.
Right?
Perfect, so i only backup configuration and on a fresh machine when i restore configuration, i’ll have backup configuration of virtual machines so i can restore them, it’s a very good solution.
What do you mean by “installed packages”?
Thank you.
webmin backups and virtualmin backups are different.
the virtualmin backup system is confusing as you use this to backup virtual servers but is also where you backup the Wirtualmin config settings.
so you need to backup:
Webmin config backup
Virtualmin config backup
Your virtual servers
It only works if you keep the same OS and OS-level …
Ideally you should keep these the same, but you can always use a text comparison to put your settings in for such things like the postfix config if the OS is different.
I meant, if I can’t access Virtualmin/Webmin anymore because of panel hacking.
In that case how would I restore the backend? That was the question.
Don’t need to save the whole Virtualmin/webmin, just save the configuration of both, install a fresh Virtualmin/webmin and load the saved configuration.
I don’t understand the term “panel hacking” - if the server has been hacked it is trashed (or at least considered totally hacked).
That means everything on it - including Webmin/Virtualmin (hackers are not selective)
You start with a clean machine and clean OS and rebuild from scratch unless you have the forensic skills and time to analyse and remove the infection from the backup (but if you have that you would be recovering the original machine)
I would not touch anything from a hacked machine - simply consider it infectious.
Ed. Or are we actually referring to the result of a phishing scam where someone has obtained access through an insecure password into an account on a web application? This can be just as serious especially if that application allows for file uploading.
if that is the case then I could not emphasise any more my complete agreement A disaster recovery plan is a Must have (and it should be written out and simple to follow and tested before handed to your team/next of kin/insurers).
The only possible scenario I can see for backing up the middleware is, when it is no more available. The installing of virtualmin with the script goes for sure faster than a file recovery. When virtualmin is no more available out of the box, then we have a problem. Well, many problems when Dallas is down.
In my case I am leading a journal of all the changes I did and once in a while I make a manual out of it. To built from scratch a new server with whatever OS, installing virtualmin, implement my configurations and import the saved virtual servers takes me about 4 h, which is in my opinion a good, solid disaster recovery.
In the case of panel hacking, or any hacking, you might have to change your DNS with IP. Then this scenario can be very helpful. It includes also an always online available second server where you can pull down your saved VS. This server can be a simple old PC standing in your basement.
