When an admin restores a standard cPanel backup through Salvo, from the panel or the command line, does the account come back whole? Does the result depend on where the restore was started? And what does the server feel while it runs?
| Command line | Panel | |
|---|---|---|
| Restore time | 1 min 01 s | 54 s |
| Domains (backup → restored) | 2 → 2 | 2 → 2 |
| Mailboxes | 14 → 14 | 14 → 14 |
| Messages | 23,174 → 23,174 | 23,174 → 23,174 |
| Account files | 26,109 → 26,123 | 26,109 → 26,123 |
| Peak server CPU | 75% | 76% |
| Peak disk writes | 396 MB/s | 385 MB/s |
Method
One real email and website account: about 2.1 GB, 26 thousand files, 2 domains and 14 mailboxes with 23 thousand messages, no database.
The backup is the standard file the panel itself creates, made on the source server and taken to another server that already serves websites and email.
Four restores, deleting the account before the next one: two from the command line and two from the Salvo panel in WHM, clicking as an admin would.
After each one, the restored account was compared file by file (size and hash) with the original: 99.77% of files identical byte for byte; the rest is regenerated by the panel itself on restore or arrived at the source after the backup.
During the restore, Salvo measured the server every 2 seconds (CPU, load, disk reads and writes, disk usage and inodes) and, at the end, showed side by side what was in the backup and what came back. Every restore stays in the history, with the full log.
What we decided
On the first restore from the panel, the log came out with extra lines compared with the command line, because the process inherited the web page’s environment. Salvo now always restores with the same environment, wherever it’s started from, and the two ways became identical, line by line. A pre-restore check that points out what the destination server lacks and the account used is planned.