In order to use Gandi's backup robot, you must first create a backup disk, and it has to be available.

Then go to your server's control panel, and go to the bottom of the page.

Click on "Manage" to add a Backup disk to your server.

Then you will be asked to select which backup disk you want to attach to your server. A few minutes after validating, the disk will be available on your server.

True to its principles, the backup engine Made in Gandi, called GSync, will install itself automatically on your GandiAI server.

For Expert mode servers, there is a package on Gandi's repositories in order to install it easily.

For Gandi AI, the robot's configuration is made through the interface. This is also partially possible for Experts.

In order to access GSync's set up interface, still at the bottom of your server's control panel, in the "Backup" section, click on "Manage the robot's configuration."

Click on "Create" in order to start setting up a new backup. The sole purpose of the name you will enter in this field is to identify your settings.

The "Directories to back up" field is far more important, and should obey a specific syntax. This is where you tell your robot which directories should be saved, by telling it the precise access path.

You must enter one path per line, always beginning with / (your server's root) and ending with the name of the target directory.

For example: If you want to save the php files of your site corresponding to vhost "mydomain.com" of your server, and those files are on your disk "/d_mydatadisk/", then your directory's path will be: /srv/d_mydatadisk/mydomain.com/htdocs

The "Path of the backup disk" field is used to name a directory on your backup disk, that will contain all of the saved version of the paths indicated in that field.

From the moment when you validate the saving configuration (and of course, if it is valid), your server will be updated and the backup robot, GSync, will be automatically installed, configured, and started.

Once you validate the form, the server will generate a configuration you will be able to use to erase the file:

/etc/gandi/gsync.conf

But first, you will have to install the package for our backup robot.

In order to install GSync on your server, the syntax is identical to a normal installation syntax, with the package name gsync. In other words, depending on your distribution, here is how it looks:

On Debian and Ubuntu:

apt-get update
apt-get install gsync

On Fedora and OpenSUSE:

yum install gsync

On Mandriva:

urpmi.update -a
urpmi gsync

If you want to make a backup of your database, add /srv/[mydisk]/exportsql to the list of directories monitored by GSync to automatically archive your database to your backup disk.

For more information on saving MySQL databases, please see the page dedicated to this topic.