Back up your VPS with restic (automatic and encrypted)

Updated 30 October 2026

A VPS comes without backups: you manage it, so you also decide what gets saved and where. The simplest solid setup is restic: it encrypts your files, only uploads what changed, and keeps for example 7 daily, 4 weekly and 6 monthly snapshots. Store them somewhere other than the VPS itself, such as another server over SFTP or S3-compatible object storage. Below is a setup you can copy in about 20 minutes.

Checked on 29 October 2026 against the restic documentation (restic.readthedocs.io). Commands are for Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12/13; on Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, restic comes from the EPEL repository (dnf install epel-release first).

1. Install restic and make a password file

apt update && apt install -y restic
mkdir -p /root/.restic && chmod 700 /root/.restic
openssl rand -base64 32 > /root/.restic/password && chmod 600 /root/.restic/password

2. Choose where the backups go

Option A: another server over SFTP. Any Linux machine or storage service with SSH access works. Make an SSH key for root on the VPS (ssh-keygen -t ed25519), add the public key on the backup server, and check that ssh user@backup-host logs in without a password. Then:

export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="sftp:user@backup-host:/srv/restic-myvps"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/root/.restic/password
restic init

Option B: S3-compatible object storage. Put the access key in the environment and use the provider's endpoint:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-key
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="s3:https://your-endpoint/your-bucket/myvps"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/root/.restic/password
restic init

Put the export lines in /root/.restic/env (chmod 600), so the script below can read them.

3. Decide what to back up

• Your own data and config: /etc, /home, /root, /srv, /opt and /var/www if you use them.
• Databases: don't copy the raw files of a running database. Dump them first, for example mysqldump --all-databases --single-transaction > /root/db.sql or pg_dumpall -U postgres > /root/db.sql, and back up the dump.
• Not needed: the operating system itself, /proc, /sys, caches and node_modules folders. You can reinstall those.

4. A backup script and a daily timer

Save this as /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh and run chmod 700 on it:

#!/bin/sh
set -e
. /root/.restic/env
# mysqldump --all-databases --single-transaction > /root/db.sql   # remove the # if you run MySQL/MariaDB
restic backup /etc /home /root /srv /opt --exclude-caches --exclude node_modules
restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune

Run it once by hand (/usr/local/sbin/backup.sh) and check the output. Then let systemd run it every night. /etc/systemd/system/backup.service:

[Unit]
Description=restic backup

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/backup.sh

/etc/systemd/system/backup.timer:

[Unit]
Description=Nightly restic backup

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 03:30
RandomizedDelaySec=15m
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now backup.timer
systemctl list-timers backup.timer

--prune actually frees the space of snapshots that forget removed. Pruning locks the repository for a while, which is why it runs right after the backup.

5. Check and restore (do this once now)

. /root/.restic/env
restic snapshots                                   # list all snapshots
restic check                                       # check the repository is healthy
restic restore latest --target /tmp/restore-test --include /etc/hostname
cat /tmp/restore-test/etc/hostname

If you get your file back, your backups work. Practise this before you need it; a full restore to a fresh VPS is the same command without --include.

Prefer not to manage backups?

Game servers at ServerSpark get an encrypted nightly backup at a separate location, plus backup slots you control in SparkPanel. A VPS doesn't, because you have full root access and we don't look inside it. VPS S costs €7.99 per month paid per quarter (€8.29 monthly billing); see VPS hosting and first steps on a new VPS.

Frequently asked questions