How long would a 5GB WP site take to backup on DO/Vultr?

Ympker

Currently having the problem, that a clients website is 5GB in size (image blog) and he doesnt want anything changed (like using cdn/external image host). The website loads fast enough with shared hosting, however aside from remote backups, if I want to take local backups to my computer or (obviously) when uploading them, the 1 MB/s IO limit of shared hosting kicks in and it takes forever to restore. Now Id reckon with a VPS of the likes of DO/Vultr the whole process would be speed up a lot, correct? So a possibility would be to move this site to a vps if it is not to be changed.. I tried backing up with both Updraft and All in One WP Migration and both take ages if I do local backups (non remote backups) to my computer, let alone when trying to restore it. Trying if cPanel Backup is faster but I guess the IO limit will still kick in, eh?

jetchirag

Considering database isn't huge, it should be like 10-20 minutes at max? (Should be even lesser)

nik

DO/Vultr will obviously be way faster since there is no 1MB/s IO limit. We can't tell you how fast it will be to backup to your computer, since your internet connection is the limiting factor and we don't know how fast it is

JoeMerit

You can make snapshots and pay for regularly scheduled backups in the control panel on Vultr/DO... would take very little time to do a restore.

Ympker

@nik said:
DO/Vultr will obviously be way faster since there is no 1MB/s IO limit. We can't tell you how fast it will be to backup to your computer, since your internet connection is the limiting factor and we don't know how fast it is

400 Mbit/s DL, 25 Mbit/s UP

Thanks for all the replies

Zerpy

Also keep in mind, e.g. if you're using "zip" in Updraft (or basically any other WP plugin for the most part) you will write a whole lot more data than if you do tar or tar.gz - what Updraft e.g. does if you're using a zip file is:

• Package X batch files to a temp file
• Move the temp file to backup_name.zip
• Package X batch files to a temp file
• Merge with temp file with backup_name.zip by rewriting it the two files to disk
• repeat.

Basically it will exponentially increase in writes per "batch" it takes - so a 5 gigabyte site, might end up writing let's say 25 or even 50 gigabyte of data to the disk before having the complete backup file - this is a limitation of the ZipArchive that is used.

If you're using tar or tar.gz - it will write the actual amount of data as you'd assume :-)

I only found this out, because I had a customer that tried to do a backup of a 50 gigabyte WP site, and it would take an enormous amount of IO to ever complete this - we're talking close to half a terabyte of writes.

jetchirag

@jetchirag said:
Considering database isn't huge, it should be like 10-20 minutes at max? (Should be even lesser)

This was based on my tests which was not a php script but rather bash. So, bash with tar and ftp/scp should be quite fast.

Ympker

@Zerpy said:
Also keep in mind, e.g. if you're using "zip" in Updraft (or basically any other WP plugin for the most part) you will write a whole lot more data than if you do tar or tar.gz - what Updraft e.g. does if you're using a zip file is:

• Package X batch files to a temp file
• Move the temp file to backup_name.zip
• Package X batch files to a temp file
• Merge with temp file with backup_name.zip by rewriting it the two files to disk
• repeat.

Basically it will exponentially increase in writes per "batch" it takes - so a 5 gigabyte site, might end up writing let's say 25 or even 50 gigabyte of data to the disk before having the complete backup file - this is a limitation of the ZipArchive that is used.

If you're using tar or tar.gz - it will write the actual amount of data as you'd assume :-)

I only found this out, because I had a customer that tried to do a backup of a 50 gigabyte WP site, and it would take an enormous amount of IO to ever complete this - we're talking close to half a terabyte of writes.

Thanks for the info

FHR

@Ympker said:

Thanks for the info

You could do incremental backups to prevent the same large images being compressed over and over again. tar --warning=no-file-changed --listed-incremental=$folder/wwwsnapshot.file -czf…
Wanted to paste the whole command, but CloudFlare is drunk again.

nik

@Ympker said:

@nik said:
DO/Vultr will obviously be way faster since there is no 1MB/s IO limit. We can't tell you how fast it will be to backup to your computer, since your internet connection is the limiting factor and we don't know how fast it is

400 Mbit/s DL, 25 Mbit/s UP

Thanks for all the replies

Both, Vultr and DO will easily max out your connection since they offer shared 10 GbE uplinks. That means your connection will be the bottle neck and not some shared hosting IO Limit.

Ympker

@nik said:

@Ympker said:

@nik said:
DO/Vultr will obviously be way faster since there is no 1MB/s IO limit. We can't tell you how fast it will be to backup to your computer, since your internet connection is the limiting factor and we don't know how fast it is

400 Mbit/s DL, 25 Mbit/s UP

Thanks for all the replies

Both, Vultr and DO will easily max out your connection since they offer shared 10 GbE uplinks. That means your connection will be the bottle neck and not some shared hosting IO Limit.

Great to hear :P Perhaps I should even give Hetzner a try as the client audience is in Germany (Im from Germany too :P) and they come with NVMe :O
Old IO limit will be long forgotten lol. And Hetzner is cheaper with more RAM at that, too.

Harzem

Here is a crazy idea: Why don't you actually try DO/Vultr and see how fast the backup process is?

They offer hourly services exactly for this reason, you can try something and delete the vps after a few hours.

Fill up the server with your backup, see how long it takes. Then back up that VPS data to a VPS in another location, or download to your local computer.

At the end of the day, when you have tested everything, it will have cost you about $0.1

Ympker

@Harzem said:
Here is a crazy idea: Why don't you actually try DO/Vultr and see how fast the backup process is?

They offer hourly services exactly for this reason, you can try something and delete the vps after a few hours.

Fill up the server with your backup, see how long it takes. Then back up that VPS data to a VPS in another location, or download to your local computer.

At the end of the day, when you have tested everything, it will have cost you about $0.1

I would have done so right away but I am already very busy today so wanted to ask for some estimates

Harzem

@Ympker said:

I would have done so right away but I am already very busy today so wanted to ask for some estimates

Fair enough