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Accessing and Managing Database Backups via FTP

Premium users can enable FTP access to automatically download daily database backups to their own system.

This guide explains how to activate FTP access, extract ZPAQ backup files, and optionally set up an automatic daily download.

1. Activating FTP Access in the Control Panel

FTP access is available only for Premium users and allows you to download daily database backups directly to your computer or backup server.

Steps:

  • Log in to your Control Panel
  • Go to Databases
  • Click Manage next to the desired database
  • Open the Backups tab
  • Click Enable Automatic Backup Access

Once activated, your FTP credentials will be displayed:

  • FTP server
  • Username
  • Password
  • Port

Save these details securely.

You can now connect to the FTP server using your preferred client (e.g., FileZilla, WinSCP, or Total Commander) and manually download your backups.

Note: Database backups are stored in the ZPAQ format — an advanced archival format with versioning support. More info: https://github.com/fcorbelli/zpaqfranz

auto_backups.png

2. How to install ZPAQ / zpaqfranz on your computer

Backups are stored as .zpaq files. To extract them, use the zpaqfranz tool — a modern and cross-platform implementation of ZPAQ.

🪟 Zpaqfranz for Windows

  • Download zpaqfranz from GitHub: 👉 https://github.com/fcorbelli/zpaqfranz/releases
  • Extract the downloaded ZIP and run zpaqfranz.exe.

🐧 zpaqfranz for Linux / macOS

  • Download the latest release:

    wget https://github.com/fcorbelli/zpaqfranz/releases/latest/download/zpaqfranz
chmod +x zpaqfranz

3. How to Extract a .zpaq Backup Using zpaqfranz

  • Make sure you have zpaqfranz.exe downloaded, e.g., in C:\Tools\zpaqfranz.

  • Open Command Prompt (CMD) or PowerShell.

  • Navigate to your Downloads folder:

    cd C:\Users\<YourName>\Downloads

  • Run the extraction command:

    C:\Tools\zpaqfranz\zpaqfranz.exe" x backup.zpaq

    Replace backup.zpaq with your actual backup filename.

By default, the files will be extracted to the same folder (Downloads). To extract to a different folder:

  "C:\Tools\zpaqfranz\zpaqfranz.exe" x backup.zpaq -to C:\Users\<YourName>\Downloads\Restore

Useful Commands

  • List all backup versions:

    zpaqfranz l backup.zpaq

  • Extract a specific version (e.g., from November 1, 2025):

    zpaqfranz x backup.zpaq -until 2025-11-01

  • Extract all BAK versions

    zpaqfranz.exe x backup.zpaq -all

TIP: Automating Daily Backup Downloads (FTP Script)

If you want to automatically download your daily backups, you can use the lightweight tool NcFTP.

  • Download from https://www.ncftp.com/download/

Example Command

Download all .zpaq backup files:

  ncftpget -z -u <username> -p <password> <server> <localfolder> /*.zpaq

Example:

  ncftpget -z -u myuser -p mypassword ftp.myserver.com /home/user/backups /*.zpaq

These backups are stored in a separate data center, completely independent from all our other services. This means they can be accessed at any time, even in the event of a total outage of all our services or the data centers we use to operate them.

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