bucketpilot
Backup & migration guides

How to back up BucketPilot Cloud to Cloudflare R2

Scheduled, incremental backups of a BucketPilot Cloud bucket to a Cloudflare R2 bucket, with restore built in — set up in a few clicks, no scripts.

Backups & Migrations: every job that copies data, in one list

Why back up BucketPilot Cloud to Cloudflare R2

BucketPilot Cloud is durable, but durable is not backed up: a deletion, an overwrite, a bad script or a lost credential all replicate perfectly. A backup is a separate copy — on Cloudflare R2 — refreshed on a schedule and restorable from. That is what this job is.

Before you start

This job runs on the Business plan (Cloudflare R2 and Google Cloud Storage buckets, Azure sources and server destinations are Business features). Every account starts with a 14-day trial of Pro; see plans.

Credentials: every account and server BucketPilot can reach
Credentials: every account and server BucketPilot can reach

Step by step

  1. 1.Connect the source. Nothing to connect. Under Buckets & Servers → Create Bucket, choose BucketPilot Cloud, pick a region (US, Europe or Asia Pacific) and a name, and the bucket exists in a minute — inside your workspace, with no keys to keep.
  2. 2.Connect the destination. Create an R2 API token with Object Read & Write on the Cloudflare dashboard and add it under Credentials. Then import the bucket under Buckets & Servers, or create one there.
  3. 3.Open Backups & Migrations and press Create. Choose A bucket as the source and A bucket as the destination, then Continue.
The Create dialog: where from, where to
The Create dialog: where from, where to
  1. 1.The form asks one question first: *if someone deletes a file by mistake, should it disappear from the copy too?* Answer No for a backup that keeps everything. (Yes sets up a mirror — an identical live copy kept by AWS itself, Amazon S3 to Amazon S3 only, with versioning on both buckets.)
  2. 2.Pick the source bucket and the destination bucket, and a folder inside each if you want only part of it. Need a fresh destination? Create a new bucket right there — it is used as the destination the moment it exists, versioned if it is for a mirror.
  3. 3.Set the schedule — hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, at the time you choose. Daily at night is the usual answer.
The bucket-to-bucket form
The bucket-to-bucket form
  1. 1.Press Create Job. Press Run now for a first pass, or wait for the schedule.

What happens on each run

Every run is incremental: a file is copied only if its size or timestamp differs from the copy, so a nightly run of a large source moves only the day's changes and finishes in minutes.

When both ends are on the same provider the copy happens server-side and the bytes never leave that provider; between providers, BucketPilot streams each file through, without keeping it.

You can watch it: live progress on the job, a per-file log, and an email when a run finishes or needs attention. Transient errors retry with backoff; a run that fails outright is reported, never silently skipped.

A job's page: progress, per-run history, and the way back
A job's page: progress, per-run history, and the way back

Cloudflare R2 has no object versioning, so the copy holds the latest version of each file. Nothing is ever deleted at the destination by a backup, so a file removed at the source stays in the copy until you remove it yourself.

What it costs

Leaving BucketPilot CloudBucketPilot Cloud has no download, request or transfer fees.
Storing at Cloudflare R2R2 is billed per GB-month at a flat rate, with an Infrequent Access class for data you rarely read.
BucketPilotYour plan; no per-GB fee for the copy itself.

Getting files back

Every job has a Restore button: it copies from the destination back to the source, only what is missing there, never overwriting a newer file and never deleting anything. A backup you cannot restore from is not a backup, so this is part of the job, not a separate product.

Questions

How often should I back up BucketPilot Cloud?
Daily is the usual answer; hourly if the source changes all day. Runs are incremental, so a more frequent schedule costs little more than a rare one.
What will it cost?
BucketPilot Cloud has no download, request or transfer fees. R2 is billed per GB-month at a flat rate, with an Infrequent Access class for data you rarely read. BucketPilot charges by plan, never per GB copied.
What about very large files?
Objects are copied in parts and a run resumes where it stopped. Single objects up to 5 GB copy as one object; larger ones are copied part by part by the provider.
Does BucketPilot keep my files?
No. Your files are copied from your source to your destination and are not stored by BucketPilot. We keep metadata — names, sizes, timestamps — to run the job and to make the copy searchable. Credentials are encrypted at rest.

Related

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