How to back up an OVHcloud VPS

What OVHcloud gives you

Prices as of October 2026. Automated backups cover the main disk only, not additional disks. A new backup time takes effect after 24 to 48 hours.

Ranges differ: on VPS ordered before 7 August 2025, the Control Panel offers Enable Automated backup instead of Order a premium backup, with that range's terms. OVHcloud's guides say neither feature works on Local Zone VPS, while its VPS page says they include the Standard backup and can add Premium and snapshots; check your Control Panel.

What the windows mean: say the backup runs at 03:00 UTC, and a bad migration damages your database at 14:00 on Monday. Tuesday's 03:00 backup contains the damage and replaces Monday's clean one. If you notice on Tuesday afternoon, Standard has nothing clean left. Premium still holds Monday's backup and the five before it.

Install the QEMU guest agent first

Both options are built on live snapshots of the running VPS. OVHcloud uses the QEMU guest agent to prepare the filesystem while one is taken, and recommends installing it because most images lack it. Check:

file /dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0

The expected answer is a symbolic link to ../vport2p1. If the output differs, for example No such file or directory, install the agent and reboot. On Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install qemu-guest-agent

sudo reboot

On Red Hat-based systems the guide uses yum install qemu-guest-agent. The agent makes the filesystem clean at the moment of the snapshot, not a running database's files: restoring one is like booting after a power cut, when PostgreSQL and InnoDB replay their logs. A dump is the copy you can trust.

Restore or mount an automated backup

In the OVHcloud Control Panel, go to Bare Metal Cloud > Virtual private servers, select the VPS and open the Automated backup tab.

• Restore: click ... next to the backup and choose Restoration. If you changed the root password since that backup, tick Modify the root password on restoration to keep the current one. OVHcloud emails you when it finishes.
• Mount: click ... next to the backup and choose Mounting. OVHcloud attaches a read-write copy of the backup to the VPS as a second disk; the original stays unchanged for later restores.

Mounting gets one file or directory back without overwriting the server. When the email arrives, SSH in and find the new disk. The backup's root partition is usually the large partition on the second disk, such as sdb1:

lsblk -f

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/restore

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/restore

Copy back what you need, for example a site's uploads. The trailing slashes copy the directory's contents into the existing directory, as the rsync guide explains:

sudo rsync -a /mnt/restore/var/www/example/uploads/ /var/www/example/uploads/

If mount fails with wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error and lsblk -f shows xfs, check dmesg for Filesystem has duplicate UUID ... - can't mount. The copy has the same UUID as your running root filesystem, and the xfs manual says a snapshot of a mounted filesystem may need the nouuid option:

sudo mount -o nouuid /dev/sdb1 /mnt/restore

When you are done, unmount it on the server, then click Unmount the backup in the Automated backup tab.

sudo umount /mnt/restore

OVHcloud's official ovhcloud CLI lists restore points from a terminal. Install it from its GitHub releases and run ovhcloud login once to create API credentials. ovhcloud vps list shows your service names, which look like vps-x11x11xyy.vps.ovh.net:

ovhcloud vps automated-backup list-restore-points <service-name>

Snapshots: before risky changes, and as an image you can keep

Order the option once: on the VPS's Home tab, find the Backup box, click ... next to Snapshot and choose Order. Then, before an upgrade or a big change, choose Take a snapshot from the same menu and add a description. Only one snapshot exists at a time, so remove the old one first with Delete the snapshot. To roll back, choose Restore the snapshot. From the CLI:

ovhcloud vps snapshot create <service-name> --description 'before do-release-upgrade'

This snapshot can also leave OVHcloud. Download the snapshot > Generate download link in the same menu, or ovhcloud vps snapshot download <service-name>, gives a link valid for 24 hours and the image's size in bytes (not on legacy vpsXXXX.ovh.net servers). OVHcloud says the file can be imported into its Public Cloud as a QCOW2 image, and advises against downloading it onto the VPS, where it would fill the disk. With rclone set up for a bucket at another company, stream it straight there, from any machine, without writing it to disk:

curl --fail -sS "<download-url>" | rclone rcat --size <bytes> offsite:my-backups/ovh/vps-2026-10-04.qcow2

Quote the URL: it contains ? and &. --size gives rclone the exact length; its docs say the transfer will likely fail if the stream is a different length, which is what you want if the download breaks off. The image is the whole disk at one moment: a good monthly or pre-migration copy, not a nightly backup.

Why the same datacentre is a risk

OVHcloud's VPS page says each automated backup is "exported and replicated three times within the same datacentre". Three copies protect against a failed disk or server. They do not protect against losing the building, and that has happened.

At 00:47 on 10 March 2021, a fire broke out in SBG2, one of OVHcloud's four datacentres in Strasbourg. In OVHcloud's own account, it "mostly destroyed the SBG2 datacentre and partially damaged the SBG1 datacentre (4 of the 12 rooms destroyed)", and firefighters could only work once power was off for the whole site, including the two datacentres the fire did not reach. 14,046 servers had been running in SBG2. A backup kept in the same building as its server shares that building's fate.

• Same account. An unpaid invoice, a suspended account or a stolen Control Panel login reaches the VPS and its backups together.
• Short windows. Standard keeps 24 hours; Premium, 7 days.
• Main disk only. Additional disks are not in the automated backups.
• Tied to the location. OVHcloud's FAQ says a VPS cannot be moved to another datacentre: you order a new VPS there and transfer the data yourself. Your own backup is that transfer.

A bucket in OVHcloud's own Object Storage at another location would survive a site fire, but it shares the company and the account. The 3-2-1 rule asks for one copy off-site; for a VPS, that means storage at another company.

Back up nightly to another provider

Back up /etc, site and app files, crontabs and each database as a dump; the server backup checklist has the full list. Set up restic with a root-only /etc/restic/env and password file as in the restic guide, with the repository in a bucket at another company, for example Cloudflare R2, and run restic init once.

RESTIC_REPOSITORY=s3:https://ACCOUNT_ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/my-backups/ovh-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

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Nightly backup of an OVHcloud 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 stores the dump as /app.sql without writing it to disk; if pg_dump fails, restic creates no snapshot. See pg_dump for the dump itself.
• For MySQL or MariaDB, put mysqldump --single-transaction --routines --events app after the -- instead, as in the mysqldump guide.
• If your data lives on an additional disk, add its mount point to the file list: that disk is exactly what OVHcloud's automated backups leave out.

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

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

Keep the restic password and bucket keys in a password manager too.

Restore onto a new server

This is also OVHcloud's documented way to change location: order a VPS where you want it, or a server at any other provider, with the same OS release as the old one. Install restic, put back /etc/restic/env and the password file, then, in a root shell with the file loaded (set -a; . /etc/restic/env; set +a):

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

If the database's owner role is missing, create it first, as in backing up PostgreSQL roles. Copy the directories you need from /srv/restore/etc, such as /etc/nginx and /etc/letsencrypt, not all of /etc. Then point DNS at the new IP and test the site. Restoring a server from backup has the full sequence with checks, and moving a server to a new provider covers a planned move.

Check that it works

• Read the log every morning for the first week, then add an alert as in backup failure alerts.
• Run restic check weekly to verify the repository's structure.
• Once a month, restore onto a throwaway server and open the site, as in testing a restore. Time it: that is your real recovery time.
• Mount an automated backup once, so the first time is not during an outage.

Frequently asked questions

Does OVHcloud back up my VPS automatically?

Yes. VPS ordered since 7 August 2025 include a daily automated backup, kept for 24 hours. The paid Premium option keeps the last 7 daily backups.

Where are OVHcloud VPS backups stored?

OVHcloud says each backup is replicated three times within the same datacentre as the VPS. That protects against hardware failure, not against losing the site.

Can I download an OVHcloud VPS backup?

You can download a snapshot: the Control Panel or the CLI generates a link valid for 24 hours (not on legacy vpsXXXX.ovh.net servers). From an automated backup, mount it and copy files out.

How many snapshots can an OVHcloud VPS have?

One. Delete it before taking another. Restoring it also deletes it.

Do OVHcloud automated backups include additional disks?

No. They cover the main disk only, so back up additional disks yourself.