Changing the location of Plesk backups

Backups that you create within Plesk are stored on your VPS in the /var/lib/psa/dumps folder. In this tutorial, we show you how to adjust the Plesk backup directory. For example, you can save the backups on Big Storage instead of the SSD of your VPS.

In our article about the backups within Plesk, we explain how the Plesk backup system works.

Step 1

Connect to your VPS via SSH or the VPS console.

Step 2

Create the folder in which you want to place the backups, for example:

mkdir -p /plesk/back-ups

Suppose you use Big Storage and that it is mounted on /mnt/bigstorage, this would be:

mkdir -p /mnt/bigstorage/plesk/back-ups

Step 3

The backups are written by the (automatically created by Plesk) user psaadm. Make this user and group owner of the new backup directory and adjust the write rights as follows:

chown psaadm:psaadm /plesk/back-ups
    

Above, replace /plesk/backups with the directory you created in step 2.

Step 4

Open the /etc/psa/psa.conf file, for example:

nano /etc/psa/psa.conf

Step 5

Scroll down to DUMP_D and adjust the directory to the directory selected in step 2, for example:

# Backups directory
    DUMP_D /plesk/back-ups

• Replace /plesk/backups again with the directory you created in step 2.
• Save the changes and close the file (ctrl + x> y> enter).

Step 6

Move any existing backups to the new directory, for example:

mv /var/lib/psa/dumps/* /plesk/back-ups
    mv /var/lib/psa/dumps/.discovered/ plesk/back-ups/

Step 7

Finally, restart the sw-cp server (this is the service which gives access to the Plesk UI via port 8443/8880).

systemctl restart sw-cp-server

This concludes our tutorial on changing the Plesk Backup Manager backup location.

Should you have any questions left regarding this article, do not hesitate to contact our support department. You can reach them via the ‘Contact Us’ button at the bottom of this page.