Backup Bird is a backup monitoring solution for servers that can keep track of various backup activities, resource graphs and also provides a central interface to take backups between remote server and cloud services like AWS, DropBox and FTP. It can notify about completed and failed backups, provide a detailed server log view of the monitored servers and also take various database backups like MySQL, mongoDB, MariaDB and more.
This is convenient when there are multiple servers that are involved in backups and rather than logging in each of them, just add them to Backup Bird dashboard.
Also, using it is free for a single server. Sign up here for a free account. The other plans require a subscription and can range from 5 servers to more than 50 servers. Plan details can be found here.
It works by first adding the remote server(s) to it’s dashboard and then configuring that server to install Backup Bird agent. As of now, only Linux agent is available, Windows agent is expected to be released soon.
Adding a server to Backup Bird :
From the dashboard, click on Server list and choose Add Server.
Enter the server name, it’s IP address and a brief description. Then, click Next.
Select the backup schedule.
Finally, choose when to receive notifications about backups. Click Add to finalize the server settings.
This adds the required server to Backup Bird account but it won’t be connected yet.
For connecting, the backup agent package needs to be installed on the server side.
Installing Backup Bird Agent on Linux server :
To do this, login via SSH to the remote server and follow these steps :
First, download the installation files :
Then, uncompress the installation package.
Once uncompressed, install the backup agent.
Overall, the progress will look something like below.
Now, to make the server “talk” with the backup service, the server key from Backup Bird dashboard for that server needs to be entered. From the Backup Bird dashboard, click on Show key and copy paste that in the config.toml file (as shown below in the key = “” field).
Other details like provider settings (Amazon Web Services etc), backup settings and database settings can also be configured here.
Finally, when all changes are done, save the file and start the agent.
If configured correctly regardless of backup providers chosen or not, Backup Bird dashboard should now list the chosen server as online/connected.
If the server is still shown as not connected, stop and restart the agent. Then, refresh the Backup Bird dashboard page.
sudo service backupbird start
The guides for backing up to different cloud providers can be found here :
As this is a new service, other providers would be added soon.
Backups can also be manually initiated by clicking on the lines icon next to Status and choosing Backup now.
Based on notification preferences, email about backups and also server connectivity will be sent.
Also, clicking on the server name will display all it’s details along with the resource graphs.
Do give it a try.