How to manually backup/restore OpenVZ container?

Kaloyan Dobrev

Updated July 09, 2026 13:09

Applicable to:

SolusVM

Question

How to manually backup/restore OpenVZ container?

Answer

Backup:

Connect to the source server over SSH.
Create an archive of the VPS:

# vzdump --compress --dumpdir /home/backup VMID

- compress : It will compress the dump file (results in a .tgz).
-dumpdir specifies the directory in which the dump should be stored. If a dumpdir is not specified, the dump is stored in /vz/dump by default."
- VMID of VPS can be found in SolusVM Virtual Servers tab

Restore:

Restore the archive:

# vzdump --restore /home/backup/vzdump-VMID.tgz VMID

Backup:
To create a backup for such VPS use the following command:

# tar --numeric-owner --ignore-failed-read -pczf <PATH-TO-BACKUP.tgz> /vz/private/UUID /vz/root/UUID

here <PATH-TO-BACKUP.tgz> is the desired path to the backup file
and UUID is the UUID of the VPS( e.g. 'bf939bd5-6fc1-4748-b972-bb7fe4063590')

Restore:

# tar -xpf<PATH-TO-BACKUP.tgz>-C /restore

Copy private and root directories to the destination:

# cp -a /restore/vz/private/UUID/* /vz/private/UUID/
# cp -a /restore/vz/root/UUID/* /vz/root/UUID/