What is Portknox Disaster Recovery?

Portknox Disaster Recovery is a nightly database and configuration backup that is stored in the file area of your own cloud.

This has the following advantages:

The backup is automatically updated every night.
You can download it at any time.
A database export contains:

Created users and groups
Nextcloud Talk rooms and chats
Activities and histories
Calendar & contact data
All metadata
Surveys, news, tasks, and all installed app data
With the database, you can also restore your cloud on another server.

The PortknoxBackup folder is located in the main directory of your Portknox Cloud admin user:

An SQL database backup is then created in this folder every night:

Are the files in my cloud also backed up?

No, Portknox Disaster Backup only backs up “metadata” such as user accounts, calendars, contacts, etc. Your actual files are not included. However, you can also back up your data automatically using the Sync Client or the Nextcloud CLI Client. There are also WebDAV apps that can perform this task.

If you want to back up larger amounts of data that are distributed across different users, we recommend sharing these folders via sharing or using the Groupfolder app. This way, the data can also be backed up via the admin user.

If you have any further questions, we will be happy to advise you.

Why should I back up Portknox Disaster Backup to my PC or an external device?

With Portknox Disaster Backup, you can restore your cloud completely without our support, move your cloud to your own server, or switch to another provider.

If you also want to keep the latest backup of your cloud on your PC, you can set up the sync client and have it download the backup automatically.

Mit dem Nextcloud Command Line Client kannst du das Backup auch auf ein anderen Server spiegeln oder automatisieren.

Under which user are the backups saved?

Initially, the disaster backup directory is created for the admin user who was created with the cloud installation.

However, you can create a new admin user at any time and create the “PortknoxBackup” directory in it. Our script selects the first admin in the cloud (sorted alphabetically) and saves it to the directory.

New users of your cloud do not initially have a “PortknoxBackup” directory. However, you can share the “PortknoxBackup” directory with any user.

How can I restore my cloud with Portknox Disaster Backup?

The prerequisite is that you have Nextcloud installed. It must not be more than two versions newer than the Portknox version. If the Portknox version is 31.x.x, your version may be 31.x.x or 32.x.x – but not 33.x.x. It is not possible to upgrade more than two versions. You can find the current Portknox version in your cloud or in our app overview.

We use MariaDB as our database. Import the .sql file from the “PortknoxBackup” directory and copy the config.php file to the config/ directory. Then run the command “./occ upgrade” in the shell. Any missing apps will be displayed and apps will be updated.

Weitere Informationen findest du in der Nextcloud Documentation.

For how long will the backup be stored?