How to Create or Restore Droplets from Backups
Backups are automatically-created disk images of Droplets. Enabling backups for Droplets enables system-level backups at weekly intervals, which provides a way to revert to an older state or create new Droplets.
You can use backups as the base image for new Droplets. This is useful to create additional Droplets with the same data and configuration as the original, or to view or restore a small number of files to the original Droplet.
You can also restore an existing Droplet to one of its backups, replacing the original Droplet with one based on the backup image. This is useful if you want to completely revert a Droplet to an older point in time, but you will lose any changes on the Droplet from after the backup was taken.
Create New Droplets from Backups
To use a backup as the base image for a new Droplet, from the control panel, click the name of the Droplet with the backup you want to use, then click Backups.
In the Droplet backups section, open the More menu of the backup you want to use and choose Create Droplet.
This brings you to the Droplet create screen with the image for that backup selected. Choose the rest of the Droplet options.
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Finally, click Create to create a Droplet based on the selected backup.
Once the new Droplet is created, you can copy files between the original and new Droplet using file transfer tools like scp or rsync.
Restore Droplets from Backups
To restore a Droplet to one of its backups, from the control panel, click the name of the Droplet, then click Backups. In the Droplet backups section, open the More menu of the backup you want restore to and choose Restore Droplet.
Because restoring a backup to your Droplet erases existing data on that Droplet, confirmation is required to complete the operation:
In the Restore Droplet window, confirm the restoration by clicking Restore Droplet.
Restoring from a backup turns your Droplet off during the restoration process and turn it back on automatically once the restoration is complete.