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How to Do a Point-in-time Restore of Your Application

Learn how to use Point-in-Time Restore on Cloudways to recover your application from a specific backup. Easily roll back deleted files, fix errors, or restore your website to an earlier version.

Written by Syed Abuzar Mehdi
Updated over 6 months ago

TL;DR? Read the summary of this article:

  1. What it is – Recover your application to any moment within the past seven days using automatic backups.

  2. Where to find it – Go to the Application Management tab in your Cloudways Dashboard and open the Restore section for the app.

  3. Select a restore point – Pick the exact date and time from the available backup timeline.

  4. One-click recovery – Click restore to revert both files and database to the chosen moment.

  5. Use cases – Great for undoing recent mistakes like bad updates or configuration changes made in the last week.

Backups are essential for every website—whether you manage a personal blog, an online store, or a business site. They provide a safety net in case something goes wrong.

If you accidentally delete critical files, disrupt your website’s functionality during development, or need to roll back to an earlier version, backups make it possible to recover quickly.

With the Point-in-Time Restore feature, you can restore your application to a specific state from a chosen backup.

This feature lets you recover data from a particular moment in the past, giving you flexibility to restore your website from a range of recent backups and minimize downtime.

Table of Contents:

Cloudways Backup System

Cloudways Platform offers an offsite, resilient, and automated backup system for all your websites to give you complete peace of mind with the ability to restore your application in case of unforeseen events.

Cloudways offers two different types of backup systems:

  1. Automated offsite server-level backup

  2. On-demand application-level backup

Deciding What to Restore: Full vs. Partial Restore

If you use Cloudways Flexible, there are two approaches when it comes to restoring your website:

  1. Full Restore

  2. Partial Restore

In Cloudways Autonomous, you can only use Full Restore.

1. Full Restore

Full restore means that you restore application web files and the database simultaneously. Here, application web files refer to your application's public_html and private_html folders. The full restore option is helpful in the following scenarios:

  1. When the issue is unknown.

  2. Application is inaccessible, including the backend.

  3. In case of a security breach.

2. Partial Restore

Partial restore means that you only restore either application web files or the database. Here, application web files refer to your application's public_html and private_html folders. The partial restore option is helpful in the following scenarios:

  1. When only the database is problematic.

  2. When only the web files have issues.

How to Restore Your Application

Here are a few simple steps to do a point-in-time restore of your application.

First of all, please select your platform:

Cloudways Flexible

Step #1 — Navigate to Backup and Restore

Log in to your Cloudways Platform using your credentials.

  1. From the top menu bar, open Servers.

  2. Next, choose the server where your desired application is deployed.

  3. Click www.

  4. Next, choose your application name.

  5. Under Application Management, select Backup and Restore.

Step #2 — Restore the Application

  1. Here, select Restore Point from the dropdown.

  2. Click Restore Application Now.

    Important Note:

    • The Time Zone of restore points is UTC – Coordinated Universal Time.

    • Ensure you have sufficient disk space available before restoring your application.

    • We recommend at least 2.5x space free for application data. For instance, if your current application data size is 100 MB, we recommend having at least 250 MB of free disk space for the restore operation.

    • In case of insufficient disk space, you can scale up your server.

  3. Here, choose the Restore Option:

    1. Complete Restore — Restore application web files and the database simultaneously. Here, application web files refer to your application's public_html and private_html folders. It is also known as Full Restore.

    2. Web Files — Restore application web files only. Here, application web files refer to your application's public_html and private_html folders. It is also known as Partial Restore.

    3. Database — Restore the application database only. It is also known as Partial Restore.

  4. Finally, click Proceed.

The total restore time is dependent on the size of the application data. You will also be notified once the restore process is completed.

Rollback and Delete Options

Your website is backed up right before the restore operation, so you can click Rollback if you want to undo the restore.

Important:

Please note that the Rollback option would only undo the changes done in the previous step. For instance, if you restored web files only, the Rollback option would only undo the web file changes.

If you are satisfied with the restored version of your website, click Delete to remove the backup that was created before the restore operation.

It allows you to go back to the main screen to use the restore feature again in the future. If you don't delete that particular backup, it will automatically be removed after 24 hours.

Cloudways Autonomous

Backup and Restore

Step #1 — Navigate to Backup and Restore:

Log in to your Cloudways Platform using your email address and password.

  1. From the top menu bar, open Applications.

  2. Then, choose your desired application.

  3. Next, click Workflow/Tools.

  4. Select Backup/Restore.

  5. Navigate to Restore.

Step #2 — Restore the Application:

  1. Here, select your desired Restore Point.

  2. Click Restore

    *The Time Zone of restore points is UTC – Coordinated Universal Time.

  3. Here, choose if you want to proceed with a Complete Restore, Web files or the database.

  4. If you choose Backup and Restore, your website is backed up right before the restore operation, so you can always restore this latest backup if you want to undo the restore for any reason.

The total restore time is dependent on the size of the application data. You will also be notified once the restore process is completed.

Note:
​You can download your application backups directly from the Cloudways Platform to your local file system. These backups include your web files and database and can be saved as a complete package or separately (web files only or database only). Once downloaded, they will be stored in the local backup directory of your application and will count towards your server’s disk space usage.

Download Backup

You can also download a local copy of your application backup (files and database) directly from the Cloudways Platform.

This can be useful if you want to keep an extra backup on your own system.

Follow these steps:

Step #1 - Backup/Restore > Restore Tab > Backup to Download:

  1. From the left-hand menu, click Backup/Restore under the Workflow/Tools tab.

  2. Click the Restore tab at the top.

  3. From the list of available backups, click Download Backup next to your desired backup.

Step #4 - Select Download Type:

A pop-up will appear. Here, you can choose one of the following options:

  • Complete Download – downloads all files and database.

  • Web Files – downloads only the web files.

  • Database – downloads only the database.

For a full copy, select Complete Download. Click the Download Backup button to start downloading.

Step #6 - Backup Download in Progress:

You will see a progress status showing that the local backup is downloading.

Step #7 - Verify Download:

Once the download is complete, your backup will be available in the local backup directory under your application.

That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.

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