I am seeking advice on establishing a robust disaster recovery (DR) procedure for my Virtualmin Pro installation that goes beyond just the domain backups.
Currently, I rely on the standard Virtual Servers Backup and Restore feature, which handles domain content, databases, and configuration perfectly.
In the event of a catastrophic server failure (machine dies), I need a defined, efficient process to restore the entire Virtualmin instance onto a fresh server (same OS, same disk layout) to achieve a near-instant clone.
Restoring just the Virtual Servers misses critical system tunings and global configurations.
Specifically, I need a reliable way to backup and restore the following components:
Virtualmin Global Settings: All configured Account Plans, Server Templates, Custom Post-Install Scripts, and global configuration options.
Webmin Module Settings: All configuration settings made through Webmin modules, especially Firewall rules (from the Linux Firewall module) and user preferences.
OS Service Tunings: System-level configuration files, such as custom MySQL/MariaDB optimisations (my.cnf or .d files), or custom web server configurations that affect Virtualmin’s operation.
My Goal: To perform a complete Bare-Metal Restore where I can:
Install the OS and Virtualmin Pro.
Restore a complete system configuration archive.
Immediately proceed to restore the individual Virtual Server backups, without having to manually re-apply tunings or firewall rules.
The Question: Does Virtualmin Pro offer a sanctioned or recommended process/script to easily archive these global configuration files and settings, facilitating a complete instance migration or disaster recovery?
Any guidance on a validated methodology for achieving a true “Virtualmin instance clone” would be greatly appreciated.
I delegate this to the VM provider who effectively take an image backup and then store it at a different location (data center). has worked though not had to use it often
then, I guess, it is back to square one - defining the disaster type, thinking the unthinkable, and planning each step. remembering that the individual potentially knows nothing about anything. (what is an OS, what is “bare metal”) it has to be off-site and secure and written as an understandable procedure, and tested
this sort of thing depend on the size of your organisation and large companies devote quite a bit of time to it (however, individuals often ignore it)
Thank you for the initial feedback. I want to clarify my exact need and return to the original question:
I can easily handle the OS installation and the base Virtualmin Pro install on a new bare-metal machine.
What I am struggling with is defining the official, sanctioned procedure to capture the entire system configuration state (i.e., achieving a true “Virtualmin instance clone”) before I restore my domain backups.
My key question remains:
Does Virtualmin Pro offer an officially supported process, script, or plugin designed to archive ALL global configurations (Virtualmin Plans/Templates, Webmin Module Settings like the Linux Firewall, and custom OS service tunings like my.cnf) for a complete bare-metal instance migration/restore?
I am looking for a validated single procedure (or a feature I may have missed) that ties these three areas together, rather than relying on manually creating multiple tar archives for different configuration sets.
Yes, both GPL and Pro have this functionality, along with the Webmin Backup Configuration Files and Filesystem Backup modules.
Bare metal is rarely that simple. I wouldn’t run services directly on bare metal, I’d run them as virtual machines on a hypervisor so recovery happens at the virtual machine, datastore level, while the RAID set only provides underlying availability.
And, to be clear, for bare-metal disaster recovеry readiness, I’d use hot-swap bays and a hardware RAID controller so failed disks can be replaced on the fly. I’d keep spares, i.e. an identical RAID controller, pre-burned-in disks, power supplies, fans, cables, and even a spare motherboard, so any failed part can be swapped immediately.
There is a separate backup mechanise in webmin that backs up the modules config (not sure what exactly and they thye will be restored) and the whole etc folder