VPS Offsite Backups: What Daily Snapshots Cover and When to Add Dual Backups

RemarkableCloud Team

Do VPS plans normally include offsite backups?

Rarely. Across the VPS market, backups are the most common paid add-on: typically 20 to 25 percent of the server price for weekly copies, sometimes daily at a higher tier. Plans that do “include backups” often mean snapshots stored on the same storage cluster as the server itself, which protects you from your own mistakes but not from the failure of the infrastructure holding both the server and its copy.

That distinction, where the backup physically lives, is the difference between a backup and a convenience feature. The industry shorthand is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with at least one copy offsite. A snapshot on the host’s own storage is one copy, one storage type, zero offsite.

What do daily snapshots cover?

Every RemarkableCloud server includes daily snapshots at no extra cost, as part of full management. They are instant restore points for the fast, common cases: a bad update, a broken deploy, an accidental deletion. Restores measure in minutes because the data never left the platform, and you can take your own snapshot before a risky change on top of the daily one.

What snapshots do not cover is the disaster case. They live next to the server, which is exactly what makes them fast and exactly why they cannot be your only copy. If the infrastructure under the server fails, the snapshot is in the same place.

What does a real offsite backup architecture look like?

It looks like layers with different failure domains, so no single event can take out the data and all its copies at once. That is what our optional Dual Backups add-on adds on top of the included snapshots, at +20% of the server price:

• Offsite copy one: Proxmox Backup Server (PBS). Incremental, deduplicated backups on separate infrastructure. PBS verification jobs re-read and checksum stored backups on schedule, so a corrupted backup is discovered by the system, not by you at 2 a.m. during a restore.
• Offsite copy two: S3 object storage. A second, independent offsite target on a different storage technology. If a restore path ever fails, the same data exists somewhere with nothing in common with the first copy.
• Weekly verification and human-assisted restores. The chain is checked every week, and when you need a restore, our team performs it.

Snapshots cover speed. PBS covers integrity. S3 covers paranoia. With Dual Backups active, the three together satisfy 3-2-1 without you configuring anything.

Why does “verified” matter more than “daily”?

Because an unverified backup is a hope, not a plan. The classic backup failure is not a missed job; it is a job that ran green for months while writing copies that cannot actually restore, discovered only during the emergency they existed for. Verification means the backup system re-reads what it stored, validates checksums, and alerts on mismatch while there is still time to fix the chain.

This is also why “we back up your server” claims deserve one follow-up question: when did you last restore one? Our answer is routine, because restores are a normal support operation here, not an escalation. Files, databases, or the full server, restored from backup by the team that manages the system.

When is Dual Backups worth adding?

When losing the server would cost you more than the add-on does. That covers most production workloads: an online store with orders in the database, a client site you are contractually responsible for, a mail server, anything you could not rebuild from a Git repository in an afternoon. For those, +20% of the server price buys two independent offsite copies, weekly verification, and a human doing the restore.

It is less critical for a staging box, a test environment, or a stateless app whose data already lives somewhere else. Daily snapshots cover the everyday mistakes there, and you can add Dual Backups later if the server grows into something that matters.

We keep it optional on purpose. The price of the server already includes the management others charge for: monitoring, the managed firewall, inbound antispam, daily snapshots, and the 500% SLA. Dual Backups is one of only two add-ons, priced plainly as a percentage of the server, and never required.

For comparison, price a typical unmanaged VPS honestly: server, plus the backup add-on, plus your time configuring and testing restore paths, plus the risk that the copy lives one rack away from the original. The sticker price gap with managed hosting shrinks fast, and the 3 a.m. gap inverts entirely.

How do I check my current host’s backup story?

Ask four questions and accept only specific answers. Where do backups physically live relative to my server? How often do they run, and what is retained? Are they verified automatically, and how would I know if verification failed? What is the restore process at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, and who performs it?

If the answers involve a shared failure domain or “you can restore via the panel yourself”, you have found your migration reason. Ours is simpler: every managed server includes daily snapshots, Dual Backups adds the offsite layers when you want them, migration in is free, and the first restore you ever request will be performed by a human who has done thousands.

FAQ

Are daily snapshots enough on their own?

For everyday mistakes, often yes. For disaster recovery, no. Snapshots live on the same infrastructure as the server, so they protect against your mistakes but not against infrastructure failure, and their retention is short. Snapshots are the fast layer of a backup strategy; offsite copies are what make it a strategy.

What is the difference between PBS and S3 backups?

Proxmox Backup Server stores incremental, deduplicated, verified backups and is the primary offsite restore path. S3 object storage is the second, independent offsite copy on a different storage technology. Two targets exist so that no single system’s failure, including the backup system’s own, can leave you without a copy. Both come with the Dual Backups add-on.

How much does Dual Backups cost?

+20% of the server price. Daily snapshots stay included on every server whether or not you add it.

Can I restore a single file, or only the whole server?

Both. File-level and database-level restores are routine support operations, and full-server restores cover the disaster cases. Open a ticket with what you need and the team handles the restore; you are never left alone with a panel and a prayer.