Hestia CP: Backup to FTP storage

Why is this necessary?

The Hestia CP panel creates backups in the local /backup directory. If you do not redirect them to remote storage, they will accumulate and can fill the entire disk, which will lead to failures in the site or the panel itself. To avoid such problems, it is recommended to use remote backup.

With each VDS, we provide free 50 GB FTP storage located in data centers in Ukraine and Germany.

‍1. Activate FTP storage

• 1. Log in to Control Panel.
• 2. Open the control page of your VDS.
• 3. Find the Backup Storage Settings item in the menu.
• 4. Switch the slider to the On position.

After activating FTP storage in the control panel you will see:

• • percentage of disk space used;
• • connection data: host, login, password (it can be generated by the button or entered manually);
• • list of allowed IP addresses that will be allowed to connect to the storage.

Attention! After clicking the "Save" button, the password will no longer be displayed. Be sure to save it immediately after creating it..

After you have created a password, you need to:

1. Add the IP address of your server to the list of allowed ones.
2. Click the Save button for the changes to take effect.

2. Set up remote backup in Hestia CP

Go to the Settings server menu.

Go to the additional Settings

Select Backup

In the Hestia CP backup settings, you can choose where to store copies:

• — Locally on the server
• — Remotely — on FTP storage, in the cloud or file sharing service

For file compression, the following options are available:

• • zstd (Zstandard) is modern, fast and efficient.
• • gzip is older, more widely supported, but slower

Compression levels for zstd:

• • 3 is fast, with good compression (for daily backups)
• • 9 is a balance between speed and size
• • 11 is slightly better compression if time is not critical
• • >19 — not recommended: slows down without significant benefit

The optimal compression level for zstd is usually between levels 3 and 11.

We recommend using remote storage — it is more reliable and does not take up space on the main server. Local copies can be lost in the event of a disk break, failure, or data corruption. In addition, it requires significant free disk space, which limits the system's resources and affects its stability.

Therefore, let's move on to setting up Remote backup, for this, check the corresponding item

Hestia CP supports several data transfer protocols:

• • FTP
• • SFTP
• • Rclone (recommended for cloud storage)

In our case, we use FTP.

Fill in the fields:

• • Host — FTP server address
• • Port — 21 (standard port for FTP)
• • Account — FTP storage user login
• • Password — user password
• • Folder — path to save backups. If a separate folder was not created — specify / (root)

After filling in all the fields, click the Save button.

3. View logs

Backup creation logs can be viewed in the Hestia CP control panel web interface. To do this, go to Server Settings - Logs

You can view a detailed log file by connecting directly to the server via SSH and viewing the file: /var/log/hestia/backup.log

Pay attention to the amount of free disk space

Before creating a copy, Hestia saves it locally in /backup. Only then — transfers it to a remote server.

This means that you need to have free space greater than the size of the backup × 2.

For example: If the site takes up 20 GB, you need at least 40 GB of free space. Otherwise, an error will appear:

Error: not enough disk space available (16326 mb) to perform the backup of admin. ( 20488 mb * 2 = 40976 mb).

For more information, see the official Hestia CP documentation: https://hestiacp.com/docs/server-administration/backup-restore.html