Update on FreePBX 15 Backup and Restore module

Hello Everyone,

The rewritten Backup & Restore module is one of the major new features of the FreePBX 15 platform. It has been completely re-designed to provide a stable and predictable backup and restore experience across all FreePBX modules. Furthermore, a lot of effort has been put into its design that allows one to backup from an old major version of FreePBX (eg: FreePBX 13) and restore to the latest (FreePBX 15), something that was never possible before. This has been one of the major roadblocks that forced users to remain on old versions of FreePBX.

The new backup and restore system was a major development effort that forced a redesign of every single FreePBX module, as the backup and restore logic was distributed to each module to manage (as opposed to previously managing it more centrally). The initial launch of the backup and restore feature in FreePBX 15 was not as smooth as we’d hoped and the FreePBX team received many bugs and feature requests post launch. Given the magnitude of this rewrite, this was not completely unexpected, but over the last six months since the release of FreePBX 15, we have worked hard to fix hundreds of bugs while working closely with the community with a goal to fulfill our promise of a stable and predictable backup and restore system.

We are proud to announce that the FreePBX backup and restore system seems to have gotten to a point where it now works very well and has received positive feedback from our community that it is doing what we designed it to do.

  1. Every FreePBX user can take a backup of their system, and easily restore it onto a new installation to ensure faster recovery.
  2. Older FreePBX 13 and 14 systems have an easy path to migrate to the latest FreePBX release.

The list below (which is by no means comprehensive) provides some insight into recent improvements, which includes issues that were raised by the community as well as our QA team that have been fixed.

In order to try the latest FreePBX 15 backup and restore, please update to the latest EDGE release and try it out. We encourage you to send us feedback so that we can continue to make backup and restore a smooth experience. Please provide feedback by raising issues to our open source bug tracking system, or submit feature requests or improvements to enhance this module’s functionality.

As per our standard policy, all modules are rigorously tested by our QA department and only after QA approval are modules allowed to move from EDGE to STABLE. We are continuing to prioritize the backup and restore work to ensure quick feedback resolution.

A big shout goes out to the entire FreePBX engineering and QA team for putting tremendous efforts into making the backup and restore stable, and to the community who helped a great deal in testing and reporting issues to us.

FREEPBX-21385 Adding an option in the warm spare section to remove Trunks from copying to the spare server, with this option the user can enable / disable this setting.
FREEPBX-21364 Backup/restore doesn’t restore Dial Number Manipulation Rules in Trunks
FREEPBX-21351 ampwebroot parameter is set to a non-default value
FREEPBX-21319 Warm spare backup does not restore asterisk manager passwords and permissions
FREEI-1358 Errors when doing restore in 15
FREEPBX-21342 Backup/Restore missing Voicemail Admin data
FREEPBX-21327 Backup/Restore missing IVR entries
FREEPBX-21340 Backup/Restore missing Directory data
FREEPBX-21339 Backup/Restore missing parking data
FREEPBX-21258 Backup & Restore - IVR Module - missing "Dial Voicemail" feature code option after restoring 14 backup
FREEI-1011 Restoring PBXact legacy (13,14) backup in FreePBX 15 breaks the FreePBX 15 system.
FREEI-1336 PBXact - Unable to take backup
FREEPBX-21089 Backup & Restore Module allows destruction of installation with just a click
FREEI-1196 Cannot restore a FPBX13 backup into 15
FREEI-970 warm spare replication does not replicate any endpoint
FREEPBX-21180 Failing backup of endpoint if directory not exists
FREEPBX-21106 Restoring from backup won’t select trunk in outbound routes
FREEPBX-21325 Backup/Restore missing parts of config on WarmSpare
FREEPBX-21385 Adding an option for removing Trunks from copying to a warm spare.
FREEPBX-21292 Backup/Restore - Warm Spare - missing items
FREEPBX-21394 Backup/restore doesn’t restore all “IVR Entries” within an IVR
FREEPBX-21363 Backup/restore doesn’t restore Dynamic agents in Queues
FREEPBX-21398 Voicemail not restored from legacy back to FreePBX 15
FREEPBX-21370 Backup Day Incorrect
FREEPBX-21400 User Manager missing functionality after restore of legacy backup
FREEPBX-21349 Extension’s “VM Extension” isn’t backed up or exported
FREEPBX-21404 Fatal backup error.
FREEPBX-21425 Error restoring SMS module
FREEPBX-21399 Firewall broken after restore from legacy backup onto FreePBX-15

Thank you for using FreePBX!
Kapil Gupta

9 Likes

Thank you.

We have a number of v13 and v14 systems we want to get upgraded and we are waiting for this module to stabilize. Does the current edge version address the issue in this thread?

Hi @FreerPBXer https://issues.freepbx.org/browse/FREEPBX-21517 has been raised and its in our plan to get that fix asap. Please add yourself as watcher in mentioned jira to keep getting updates on issue progress.

thanks

Can backups of FreePBX 13 High Availability systems be restored on new non HA FreePBX 15?

Except HA module , You should be able to restore other modules configuration.

Giving up that ghost, are you?

1 Like

Well, I am thinking about it.
I’l decide before Asterisk 13 goes end of life in September.
If by then there is nothing on the new HA module that was about to be released “any moment” three years ago then I will drop it.

My guess is it’s just dead as there is little info from Sangoma. It’s probably not a priority and has little revenue potential, also because the old HA version didn’t work well but was fraught with stability issues and caused more problems than it solved.

I’m glad for this new upgrade path, and feel like we can’t use it until there is an abundance of “It worked without issue” posts. We can’t risk using it and discovering days later that there is a defect, at which time it’s too late to fall back.

It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s positioned against off-prem systems where these upgrades come at no extra cost, so we can’t bill $1000 for one…they need to be fast, trouble-free, and reliable.

Update on my earlier UCP: Error requesting page post and my ticket.

Kapil gave me amazing help on this.

It was NOT the Backup and Restore module!

It is the latest Voicemail version v15.0.18.11. I went back to v15.0.18.10 and now all works fine!

Hi @StephanK glad to hear that FreePBX 13 Backup is successfully getting restore to 15 and really appreciate all your help to debug the issue which turns out to be non-backup related issues. just fyi - voicemail issue also identified and fix should be release soon. If you face any further issue, please feel free to raise Jira.

Thanks a lot

Is it possible to restore to FreePBX 15 from a 6.12.65 backup?

Distro version 6.12.65 is probably FreePBX 12, in which case, yes you can restore a backup to 15.

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