<p>I have a VPS host running 3 sites using Ubuntu Hardy. I've spent much time setting it up. That includes all the installation + configuration and stuff. What ways are there to do backup + restore for VPS? </p>

[{'answer_id': 72897, 'author': 'ceejayoz', 'author_id': 1902010, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1902010', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>It'll depend a lot on what your host offers. MediaTemple and Slicehost both offer snapshot backups for a nominal fee.  Contact your host and ask if they offer such a solution.</p>\n\n<p>If your host doesn't offer anything, you could always backup the critical stuff regularly to something like Amazon's S3 storage service.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 72990, 'author': 'Jim', 'author_id': 8427, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/8427', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>Backups alone aren't enough.  You should be keeping a detailed system log of all configuration changes you make to the system so that you can reproduce your configuration elsewhere.  Ideally, perform the changes on a local VM, then write a script to perform those changes automatically, then run those scripts on the live server.  By avoiding manual configuration, all your configuration is repeatable, so to deploy to a new server, you just have to run all of your scripts in sequence.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 4690962, 'author': 'Victor M', 'author_id': 575648, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/575648', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You can try to implement a simple script to backup your data using rsynch - you\'ll need a second Linux machine with Internet access and some tinkering to make sure your backups are reliable in case you need to restore the - think /etc/ settings, website files and any databases you might have. Pay special attention to file permissions.\nSome hosting companies offer managed backup with their plans - you could look into that as well, but make sure your backups run and are stored remotely - you don\'t want the same disaster to strike all copies of your precious data.\nLast, if you can do with a small amount of disk space for your backups, you can try a free account from <a href="http://ww.vps-backup.com" rel="nofollow">VPS Backup</a> - it\'s free up to 5GB of compressed data, works on most flavors of Linux and is specially suited to backup MySQL databases as well. Since you don\'t have to pay for it, it might be a good workaround until you figure longtime solution.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/72858', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/11927/']