Setting up Bitrix24 On-Premise backups

Configuring Backups for Bitrix24 On-Premise

Backup is the only thing standing between you and disaster when a disk dies or someone accidentally deletes 10,000 client records. In On-Premise administration, "we have a backup" is what separates serious operations from those that either pay to recover data or cannot recover it at all.

What to Back Up

Bitrix24 On-Premise consists of several components, each requiring its own strategy:

Configuring the Built-In Backup

Bitrix24 has a built-in backup module: Settings → Backup. It creates file archives and a database dump, but has critical limitations:

• Slower than professional tools (mysqldump through PHP)
• Creates the archive on the same disk — if the disk fails, it is lost along with the data
• No incremental backup — every run is a full backup

For production, treat the built-in backup as a supplement, not the primary backup mechanism.

Professional Configuration via Cron

Database with Percona XtraBackup (for databases >10 GB):

#!/bin/bash
# /usr/local/bin/bitrix-backup-db.sh
BACKUP_DIR="/backup/bitrix/db"
DATE=$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M)

# Full backup every Sunday
if [ $(date +%u) -eq 7 ]; then
    xtrabackup --backup --target-dir=$BACKUP_DIR/full_$DATE \
        --user=bitrix --password=$DB_PASS
else
    # Incremental backup on other days
    xtrabackup --backup --target-dir=$BACKUP_DIR/inc_$DATE \
        --incremental-basedir=$BACKUP_DIR/latest_full \
        --user=bitrix --password=$DB_PASS
fi

Files via rsync with rotation:

#!/bin/bash
# Daily file backup with 30-day retention
rsync -avz --delete \
    /home/bitrix/www/upload/ \
    backup-server:/backups/bitrix-upload/$(date +%Y%m%d)/

# Delete backups older than 30 days
find /backups/bitrix-upload/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +30 -exec rm -rf {} \;

External Backup Storage

A backup on the same server is not a backup. Configure replication to external storage:

Option 1: S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2):

aws s3 sync /backup/bitrix/ s3://your-bucket/bitrix-backups/ \
    --endpoint-url https://s3.amazonaws.com

Option 2: Offsite server via rsync/SSH: configure SSH keys and automated cron synchronization to a backup server in a different data center.

Option 3: NAS on the local network as intermediate storage + replication to the cloud.

Testing Recovery

A backup that has never been tested for recovery is an illusion of security. Perform recovery drills at minimum once per quarter:

1. Provision a test server
2. Restore the latest database backup: xtrabackup --prepare && xtrabackup --copy-back
3. Restore files
4. Verify functionality: login, open CRM, check recent records
5. Record the recovery time (RTO) — for most clients, 2–4 hours is acceptable

Target metrics for Bitrix24 On-Premise:

• RPO (acceptable data loss): no more than 1 hour → hourly incremental database backups
• RTO (recovery time): no more than 4 hours → documented procedure, tested in advance

If the backup has not been tested — it does not work. This is an axiom.