How to back up a Contabo VPS

What Contabo gives you

Contabo is direct about both. Its help center says "The Snapshot feature is not a backup" and that snapshots cannot be downloaded. Its Auto Backup page says Contabo makes sure backups run and stay accessible, but does not promise that a restore will work, does not perform recovery for you, and tells you to verify backups regularly.

Take a snapshot before risky changes

A snapshot is the right tool before an upgrade or a big config change: if it goes wrong, roll back. In the Customer Control Panel:

1. Go to Servers & Hosting > VPS.
2. Open the More menu next to the VPS and choose Create Snapshot.
3. Enter a name and, optionally, a description, then select Create Snapshot.

From a shell, use Contabo's cntb CLI. Configure it once with the client ID, client secret, API user and API password from the Control Panel's API page (cntb config set-credentials, see its README). Then find the instance ID and take a snapshot:

cntb get instances

cntb create snapshot 12345 --name 'before-upgrade' --description 'apt full-upgrade, October 2026'

Names are limited to 30 characters of letters, numbers, spaces and dashes; descriptions to 255. List, roll back and delete with:

cntb get snapshots 12345

cntb rollback snapshot 12345 snap1628603855

cntb delete snapshot 12345 snap1628603855

On a Cloud VPS 4 there is one slot, so taking a new snapshot means deleting the old one first. That is one more reason a snapshot cannot be your only copy.

Why neither is an off-site backup

• Same company, same account. A billing problem, a suspended account, a lost login or a stolen Control Panel password affects the server and its snapshots and backups together.
• Short windows. Damage you notice after 10 days is past every Auto Backup; after 30 days, past every snapshot.
• Tied to the VPS. Snapshots cannot be downloaded, and Auto Backup restores onto the original VPS. Neither can start a server at another provider.
• All or nothing. Getting back one deleted file means rolling back the whole VPS.

Contabo's help center sums up the rest: "At Contabo we don't store customer data, so we are not able to recover any data loss you may have experienced." The 3-2-1 rule asks for one copy off-site; for a VPS, that means storage at a different company.

What to back up yourself

• /etc: web server, PHP, firewall and service configuration.
• Site and application files: /var/www, /home, /root, and /opt or /srv if your apps live there.
• Databases as dumps, never as raw data files copied while running: see pg_dump and mysqldump.
• Crontabs in /var/spool/cron, and Docker volumes if you run containers (Docker volume backups).

The server backup checklist covers the rest, from TLS certificates to the list of installed packages.

Back up nightly to another provider

restic suits this well: it encrypts on the server, uploads only changed data, and writes straight to an S3-compatible bucket. Install it and create the root-only /etc/restic/env and password file as in the restic guide, with the repository in a bucket at another company, for example Amazon S3 in Frankfurt, near Contabo's EU servers:

RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/my-backups/contabo-web1
RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/etc/restic/password
RESTIC_CACHE_DIR=/var/cache/restic
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key-id
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret-access-key

Load it in a root shell and create the repository once:

set -a; . /etc/restic/env; set +a

restic init

Then the nightly script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Nightly backup of a Contabo VPS to a bucket at another provider.
set -euo pipefail
set -a; . /etc/restic/env; set +a

# 1. The database, streamed into restic. A failed dump creates no snapshot.
restic backup --tag db --stdin-filename app.sql --stdin-from-command -- sudo -u postgres pg_dump app

# 2. Files. --one-file-system stays on the filesystem of each directory listed.
restic backup --tag files --one-file-system --exclude-caches /etc /var/www /home /root /var/spool/cron

# 3. Keep 7 daily, 4 weekly and 6 monthly snapshots of each; delete the rest.
restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune

• --stdin-from-command runs pg_dump and stores its output as /app.sql in the snapshot, with nothing written to disk. restic's docs: a non-zero exit from the command cancels the backup, and no snapshot is created.
• For MySQL or MariaDB, put mysqldump --single-transaction --routines --events app after the --, with credentials in root's option file as in the mysqldump guide.
• forget keeps the policy separately for the database and the files, because restic groups snapshots by host and paths.

sudo chmod 700 /usr/local/bin/contabo-backup.sh

30 2 * * * root /usr/local/bin/contabo-backup.sh >> /var/log/contabo-backup.log 2>&1

If you prefer plain archives, tar plus an upload works too, and rsync can mirror to a server elsewhere. Whatever you use, keep the restic password in a password manager as well: a copy that lives only on the VPS dies with it.

Contabo Object Storage: a second copy, not the only one

Contabo sells S3-compatible Object Storage in three regions: EU (https://eu2.contabostorage.com), US Central (https://usc1.contabostorage.com) and Singapore (https://sin1.contabostorage.com). It supports versioning, lifecycle rules that expire objects, and Object Lock, which can only be turned on when a bucket is created. Capacity comes in 250 GB steps, and Contabo lists the AWS CLI, rclone and s3cmd among the tools that work with it.

Two limits matter. Its default bandwidth is 10 MB/s (80 Mbit/s): restoring 150 GB takes 15,000 seconds, a little over four hours, before any database import. And it belongs to the same company and the same account as the VPS, so it protects you from a failed host, not from losing the account. Use it as a fast extra copy if you like, and keep one copy at another provider.

Restore onto a new Contabo VPS or another provider

1. Create a server with the same OS release as the old one, at Contabo or anywhere else.
2. Install restic and put /etc/restic/env and the password file back, from your password manager.
3. Restore the newest files snapshot into a staging directory, then copy what you need into place.
4. Create the app's database and its role, then load the dump.
5. Point DNS at the new IP and test the site before anyone else does.

In a root shell with /etc/restic/env loaded, as above:

restic restore latest --tag files --target /srv/restore

sudo -u postgres createdb app

restic dump --path /app.sql latest app.sql | sudo -u postgres psql -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 -d app

--tag files and --path /app.sql pick the newest snapshot of each kind; plain latest would take whichever ran last. Do not copy /srv/restore/etc over /etc wholesale: files such as fstab, the netplan config and SSH host keys belong to the old machine. Copy the directories you need, such as /etc/nginx or /etc/letsencrypt. If the database owner role is missing, restore it first, as in backing up PostgreSQL roles. The full sequence, with checks, is in restoring a server from backup.

Check that it works

• Read the log each morning for a week, then add an alert: a backup that silently stopped protects nothing.
• Run restic check weekly to verify the repository's structure.
• Once a month, restore onto a throwaway VPS and open the site, as in testing a restore. Time it: that is your real recovery time.

Frequently asked questions

Does Contabo back up my VPS automatically?

Only with the paid Auto Backup add-on: one backup a day, kept for up to 10 days in a Contabo data center. Without it, nothing is backed up unless you take snapshots or run your own backups.

How long does Contabo keep snapshots?

30 days. Then they are deleted automatically; the Control Panel shows each snapshot's deletion date.

How many snapshots can I have on Contabo?

1 on Cloud VPS 4, 2 on Cloud VPS 6, 3 on Cloud VPS 8 to 18, and 5 on Cloud VPS Plus plans. Storage VPS and VDS have none.

Can I download a Contabo snapshot?

No. Contabo's help center says snapshots cannot be downloaded. For a copy you can take elsewhere, back up files and database dumps yourself.

Can I restore a Contabo Auto Backup to a different server?

Contabo documents restoring onto the original VPS only, as a whole, overwriting its current data.