Skip to content

VaultPress

VaultPress runs an automated hourly backup of a site’s SQL database, stored in an offsite digital vault in real-time.

In addition to VaultPress, the VIP Platform stores database backups in a separate process. The VIP backups are taken hourly for production sites and daily for non-production sites, regardless of whether VaultPress is enabled.

Notice

VaultPress is in the process of being deprecated from the WordPress VIP Platform. New VaultPress connections can no longer be created for any site on any environment.

Scheduled removal process for existing VaultPress connections:

  • Tuesday, March 14th, 2023: VaultPress will be disabled on non-production environments.
  • Tuesday, March 28th, 2023: VaultPress will be disabled on production environments.
  • Thursday, June 29th, 2023 (expected): VaultPress plugin code will be removed from the VIP Platform’s Must Use (“MU”) plugins and the VIP Platform.

Customers can download a backup of their WordPress environment’s full SQL database—including custom tables—in the Database Backups panel in the VIP Dashboard. Backups can also be downloaded for one or more specific database tables, as well as backups of a single network site on a multisite.

The Database Backup Shipping feature can also be enabled to automatically ship database backups for a WordPress application’s production environment at regular intervals to an assigned AWS S3 bucket.

Customers have the option to configure an environment—production or non-production—to be excluded from disablement in March. An environment will continue to have access to VaultPress until it is fully deprecated at the end of June 2023 if VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD is defined as false in vip-config.php. For example:
define( 'VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD', false );

Limitations

  • VaultPress backups only include wp_-prefixed tables and are intended solely for local development.
  • VaultPress backup files cannot be imported directly to a VIP Platform environment because of incompatible format and content.
  • For a WordPress multisite environment, each site on the network is backed up individually by VaultPress. WordPress database tables that are shared by the entire multisite can be accessed in the VaultPress backups for the main site (ID 1).
  • VaultPress backups do not contain the files associated with the media library. A copy of a site’s media files can be access in the Media Backups panel of the VIP Dashboard.

Accessing VaultPress backups

With a VaultPress user account, VaultPress backups can be accessed from a site’s WordPress Admin dashboard, by selecting VaultPress under the Jetpack menu.

A VaultPress user can be added by submitting a request to VIP Support and including the following information:

  • The username or email address associated with the user’s WordPress.com account.
  • The Site Address (URL) of the VIP site for which they would like to access backups.

A user can create a WordPress.com account without having to create a blog or site by visiting: https://wordpress.com/start/account

Importing VaultPress backups for local development

Once downloaded, VaultPress backup files can be imported into a local development environment using the WP-CLI command wp db import <path-to-file>.

Jetpack option values are stored in a site’s database and will exist in a VaultPress backup. To prevent these values from creating Jetpack conflicts with the production site, either

Disabling VaultPress

To disable VaultPress on a given environment, the VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD constant can be defined in a repository’s vip-config.php file to disable VaultPress and prevent it from loading:

define( 'VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD', true );

Last updated: March 02, 2023