Server cloneing or backup

Backup of full server is useless...

You should considere to only backup your data which for i-MSCP means:

• /etc/passwd and /etc/passwd- files
• /etc/shadow /etc/shadow- files
• /etc/group /etc/group- files
• /etc/imscp directory (iMSCP conffiles)
• /etc/mysql directory (MySQL conffiles)
• /var/lib/mysql directory (MySQL data)
• /var/mail/virtual directory (Mail data)
• /var/www directory (Httpd data + i-MSCP data)

For the rest, all can be recreated by running the i-MSCP installer.

For the way to backup those files/directories, google is your friend.

Quote from Goodpeace

Is there maybe a possiblity to only save the configuration (Domains, Emailaccount and so on), and if anything fails that this can be imported?

Then you have to backup at least:
- files from /var/www/virtual
- mails from /var/mail/virtual
- databases from /var/lib/mysql and /etc/mysql directory (backup those only when mysql server will be down)

About configuration - backup all /etc/imscp directory and also all databases related to imscp

This should be enough.

Also remember that if you have installed any plugins and software related to them, you will have to install it again "when anything fails" and if you will have to reinstall your server.

I made good experiences with

• rsync for /var/www/, /var/mail/ and /etc/
• mysqldump --all-databases

Then you have all you need. And you can do the mysql-dump without stopping mysql

For me the best solution is duplicity used with a wrapper around: https://github.com/zertrin/duplicity-backup.sh - maybe it fits your needs

there is also rdiff http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/
it is using rsync but also saves incremental states. useful for /var/www/virtual backups, so you can restore a specified moment. while it doesn't take the space of multiple full-backups. kind of mac time machine or windows shadow copy

Quote from Goodpeace

Right ?

Not really... Please read http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/docs.html