Most cloud providers give you the option for automatic backups.

If you want even more peace of mind (or don’t want to pay for Linode’s backup service) you can roll your own simple backup solution using rsync.

You will need access to another Linux server (maybe another Linode?) or a home server. I just installed Ubuntu on an old desktop computer to use as a backup server.

We’re going to create a weekly cronjob that backs up our Linode’s home directory to a backup server. I keep all the files that I would want to backup in my home folder, so this works for me.

Open your crontab:

crontab -e

Add this line to the file:

@weekly rsync -r -a -e "ssh -l <your username on backup server> -p <ssh port number of backup server>" --delete /home/<your username> <hostname or ip address of backup server>:/path/to/some/directory/on/backup/server

I recommend running the above command manually to make sure you have it right before adding it to your crontab file.