Support for Incremental Backups in Pterodactyl Wings

[purejosh]

Copied from #5245

Describe the feature you would like to see.

Currently, Pterodactyl Wings supports only full backups, which can be time-consuming and storage-intensive, especially for large servers with frequent data changes. Implementing incremental backup functionality would allow the system to back up only the data that has changed since the last backup, thereby saving storage space and reducing backup times.

Describe the solution you'd like.

Introduce an option within the Wings backup management interface to select between full and incremental backups. This feature would enable administrators to schedule regular incremental backups, with periodic full backups to ensure data integrity. The system should manage backup chains effectively to maintain consistency and allow for reliable restoration processes.

Additional context to this request.

Incremental backups are a common feature in many backup solutions, offering efficiency in both storage and time. By implementing this feature, Pterodactyl Wings would provide a more robust and flexible backup system, catering to the needs of administrators managing large and dynamic server environments.

[rowansc1]

Beat me to it!

[purejosh]

The amount of need I have for this feature is unreal, lol. I had to get it moved over ASAP. I'd switch back ends, if it meant I could get snapshot-like backups.

[DaneEveritt]

I've been out of the loop for awhile now — is there a preferred tool that people use for this? It would need to be something Wings can interface with and ideally not something with a huge amount of setup.

[purejosh]

I personally didn't have one in mind, no. The operation would be to collect metadata from the first backup, which is called a baseline, and then the next time the snapshot runs, compare that metadata against the current files being backed up, and selectively backup files based on what's changed and what's not. Obviously it's a lot more complex than that, but if you were to find something that already does this, such as a linux package, I don't think anyone would be upset about installing a dependency for snapshot backups to work.

[mechite]

@DaneEveritt You may consider something like bsdiff.

[AndyIsHereBoi]

I use borg backup, but im not sure if it would be a good fit or if it has a built in module or something for go. right now we have it execute borg commands directly to the node to do actions, i can show you a demo if you would like

by demo i mean a working implementation, but if there isnt a module for go that is maintained i dont see this being a thing anyway