There are two types of people in the world: those who do backups and those who don't. “oh, shit! what happened?! Where is my data?! FFFFFUUUUUUUUU…” Yet. But will definitely do in the future. We are from the first category.
Disclaimer: Snapshots functionality in devices and containers was deprecated and removed from flespi on September 2024.
How flespi backup system works
We have already written about flespi “one-of-a-kind state-of-the-art” storage system. Now it has its own backup system: every 24 hours it takes a snapshot of each storage item and stores it on separate servers. With snapshots, you can get access to data for the last 10 days.
We do not backup abques as they store frequently changing data. We do backup containers since they serve to store messages for devices and can carry up to 10GB of precious data. Also, some of our customers use dedicated containers as an online database. So if something goes wrong, we have Plan B.
Interface
We have added two methods into the devices API (and containers API):
List available snapshots for the selected device
Download specified snapshot
The flespi panel has internalized the above two methods by adding a Snapshots tab for Devices and Containers:
Note! You cannot force flespi to create a snapshot for you. The backup system picks the moment to make a snapshot automatically.
Advantages
It is free. We will not charge you for backup functionality. Snapshots do not affect the overall system storage calculation. This is our internal backup system, part of which we decided to share with our customers in an easy way.
Save money on storage. Keep devices messages with ttl=1 day and have 10 days worth of data in the backup.
Keep messages history on your side. A container is a key-value database with extended features to sort, filter, and search that may be used in complex requests and analytics. But if you need the messages only “just in case” without complex logic, you can simply download the snapshots every 10 days. It will take less space and you will not be limited to the platform restrictions on the storage volume (e.g. 10GB) and storage period (up to 10 years) — store as much as you need for as long as you need it.
Conclusion
The flespi team definitely knows that data cost is high. So we care about your data and provide you with useful instruments to operate it.