Backups: how they work and how to restore one

Every server is backed up automatically to storage outside the node it runs on. The Backups tab is where you see, take, browse and restore them.

What happens on its own

Backups run on a schedule you can set in the Backups tab (the time selector); the world and every file in the server folder are included. Free backups are kept for three days; the backups add-on keeps them longer and backs up more often. A backup taken before an action that could go wrong is always worth it.

Backup storage

Backups are compressed and each one stores only what changed since the one before, so they take less room than the files on your servers. The Backup Storage card on any server’s Backups tab shows how much of your backup storage they use, with every server and app that has backups:

Each row is what that server’s or app’s backups take up: what deleting all of them would free. Files that several servers have in common are kept once and get a row of their own, so the rows add up to the total.
Below the card, each snapshot shows its Size (all of the server’s files in it, what a restore brings back) and what it Changed since the one before.
When storage is full, each new backup replaces the oldest one on your account, and every server keeps its latest backup.

Restore

Stop the server.
Backups, then Restore on the snapshot (on a phone, in its menu). The server folder is replaced by the snapshot; the panel shows progress.
Start.

To take just one file or folder out of a snapshot, open it with Browse files in the snapshot’s menu and download what you need instead of restoring everything. Browsing works on every plan.

Clone

Clone to a new server in the snapshot’s menu creates a second server from a snapshot: a test copy before a big update, or a fresh start with the same world. The clone takes its own share of the RAM pool while it runs.

Before an upgrade or a pack update

Take a backup first. A world opened by a newer Minecraft version cannot go back, and modpack updates sometimes remove mods whose blocks then vanish. Restoring is one click; regenerating is not.

Good to know

Delete in the snapshot’s menu frees the storage, and the dialog says how much before you confirm. An older snapshot frees less than its size, because the snapshots after it still use most of its files.
A snapshot is never deleted by a server delete until its retention ends.
Backups are per server; a server that is deleted takes a final backup you can restore for a while.