Use SSH and tar to Backup Your Entire Linux Server

Sometimes I just need to make a backup of every single thing that could ever possibly be important on my server. Rather than selectively backup only the things I need, I made this script that will just backup the whole damn thing! It even pipes the whole backup to another server. 👾

tar -zcf - --directory / --exclude=mnt --exclude=proc --exclude=tmp --exclude=run --exclude var/spool . | ssh -i YOUR_RSA_KEY_PATH backups@my.backup-server.com "cat > /backup_disk/vps/full-backup-`date '+%d-%B-%Y'`.tar.gz"

All of the data is piped into tar, gzip, then ssh. The data is never permanently saved to the server that is running the script.

Don’t Forget:

• Replace YOUR_RSA_KEY_PATH with your own RSA key path, or just use a password. I always use RSA keys on all of my servers for extended security, and disable password authentication.
• Replace the ssh username and address.
• Exclude any directories that should not be backed up.

Let me know if you need any help!