Recently, I ordered a new VPS and had to setup backups to my remote FTP server. This time around I chose to use the default system as a opposed to the legacy system that I’m familiar with. I setup all my options yet no matter what I did the backups never transferred to my remote FTP account. It was driving me nuts! I Googled around and found the answer. I’m posting it here.
Basically you have to find the remote location’s name in /var/cpanel/backups. This will be the name you chose for the backups location plus a unique ID and edit it’s file to add upload_system_backup: 1 to the tail end of the file. You can read the full documentation here: http://docs.cpanel.net/twiki/bin/view/AllDocumentation/WHMDocs/SystemBackups . I logged in via ssh and used nano to do the edit. You can also download the file via WinSCP and open it in your favorite text editor.
I don’t know whether it’s a bug or just poorly implemented but it makes no sense to me. If I define a remote backup location and have it enabled obviously I want my backups transferred there. I shouldn’t need to go through a convoluted process of editing a file from the command line. It’s flies in the face of why people use web-based control panels like WHM.