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Game Server Backups and Schedules
Create manual game server backups, schedule automatic backups and restarts from the panel, and understand the free-space requirement.
Game worlds are the one thing on a game server you cannot download again. The panel's Backups and Schedules tabs let you snapshot the server on demand, automate it, and combine it with routine restarts. Both are reached from the panel described in Access Your Game Server Panel.
Backups#
A backup is an archive of the server's files (world, configuration, plugins or mods) taken at that moment. Where backups are enabled for your product, the Backups tab lists existing ones with their size and date, and lets you create, download, restore, lock, and delete them.
- Create a backup. Click Create Backup, give it a name you will recognise later ("before 1.21 update"), and optionally list files to ignore. Large worlds take a few minutes.
- Download or restore. Use the menu on a backup to download the archive to your computer for safekeeping, or to restore it onto the server. When restoring, the panel asks whether to delete all files before restoring: leave it unticked to lay the backup over your current files (anything not in the backup is kept), tick it for an exact rollback. Either way, stop the server first and, ideally, take a fresh backup.
- Lock the ones that matter. Locking prevents accidental deletion, and stops the backup being rotated out when the slot limit is reached.
A backup is written into your server's disk allocation before it is stored, so a nearly full server cannot complete one. Keep headroom by clearing old logs, unused modpacks, and stale worlds. Your plan sets the number of backup slots; when they are full, delete or unlock one before creating another.
Ignored files#
The Ignored Files box on the create-backup form takes one pattern per line and excludes matching paths from the archive: logs/, *.log, cache/, or a huge dynmap folder you can regenerate. Excluding junk keeps backups small and fast, which matters when they have to fit inside your disk allocation. When in doubt, include it.
Schedules#
Schedules run tasks automatically on a timer, using cron-style timing. Each schedule holds one or more tasks that run in order, with an optional delay between them. Common recipes:
- Nightly restart
- Task 1: send a console command such as
say Server restarting in 60 seconds. Task 2, after a 60-second delay: power action Restart. Restarts clear memory leaks and load pending updates; players learn to expect them. - Daily or weekly backup
- Task: Create backup. Pair it with a "save all" console command first so the archive contains the latest world state.
- Announcements
- Task: a console Send command that posts a message on a schedule.
- Create the schedule. Name it and set the timing. The fields follow cron: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week.
0 5 * * *is 05:00 every day;0 4 * * 1is 04:00 every Monday. - Add tasks in the order they should run, with delays where you want players warned first.
- Enable it and, for anything important, use Run Now once to confirm it does what you expect.
Belt and braces#
Panel backups live with the server. For a world you truly cannot lose, also download a copy periodically (or pull it over SFTP) so a copy exists somewhere else entirely. The reasoning is the same as for any server: see Backups, RAID, and Data Protection.
Timezone note#
Schedule times are interpreted in the panel's configured timezone, which may not be yours. Check the first run against the Activity tab and adjust the hour if it fired earlier or later than you intended.
