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This article will provide information on how backups are handled in cPanel, what are our options as system administrators, and a few tips on how to pick a good backup strategy for our server. The information contained within this article is based solely on my experience with cPanel, and Linux based servers.

Part 1: Backup Overview
Backups are the most important factor in every server environment. Backups are a crucial stand point for possible hardware and/or software failure. If your data is important to you and your clients, setting up backups will be your first consideration. Backups are usually done on a separate hardware device (e.g. second hard drive), although it is possible to use the same device for backups. I highly recommend not using the same device, as you leave no second recovery option in case your only hardware device fails.

Part 2: Preparing Your Backup Drive
[Skip this part if your hard drive has already been formatted and mounted]
If you have an unformatted secondary drive in your server, you will have to format and mount it as the backup drive. WHM (Web Host Manager) will allow you to quickly perform these steps to setup and configure your secondary hard drive as a quick backup solution. This will be your first step toward a complete backup configuration.

Log into WHM, and scroll down on the left frame of your web browser until you see the Disk Drives section as seen in the snap shot to the left. Our first step will be to mount, and format our new hard drive. Click on the Format/Mount a new Hard Drive button.

cPanel will quickly scan your system, and display its findings as seen in the snap shot below.

Note: If cPanel didn’t find any available unformatted drives, it will display a message stating so.

Our next step will be to partition, format, and mount our new hard drive. Click on the Partition, Format, and Mount Disk button. cPanel will display several file system selections, and a Mount Point as seen in the snap shot below.

By default, cPanel will assign /backup as your server’s Mount Point . If you’re going to use your second hard drive as a backup drive as presented in this example, I recommend using the default Mount Point assignment, although it can be just any name you want to use (e.g. /home2 ). I personally prefer using /backup as it makes sense that it is the backup drive.