Support » Plugin: UpdraftPlus: WordPress Backup & Migration Plugin » Great featured plugin, but with major flaw

  • I like the features and capabilities of this plugin very much, unfortunately for me it caused significant issues. I run 4 WordPress websites off the same hosted account, and while installing it on one and setting it to push backup files to Dropbox seemed to work great.

    When I rolled it out it on additional sites however, it caused major performance issues to the point where I struggled to even navigate the admin panel on any of my sites, and it also caused issues with other plugins due to the panel falling over in the middle of updating them and seemingly causing corruption.

    If you’re only running a single site, I’m sure it’a a great plugin, if you’re running multiple sites off the same host though, beware!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    Hi,

    Thanks for trying UpdraftPlus! Backing up your website is, by its nature, the most resource-intensive thing you can do: it involves reading every bit of every file, and every row of every database table, on the site – and then writing it all out again; compressing it; and uploading it to remote storage. This isn’t something specific to UpdraftPlus; it’s what backing up means. As such, yes, if you try to do that on several sites on the same server simultaneously, then it’s going to be taxing on your CPU. So, you’ll want to stagger your backups if they’re all on the same server – especially if your hosting company aggregates your sites such that all sites on the same hosting account share resources, and if they then apply limits on your resources limits which simultaneous backups are likely to hit. This can’t really be considered a flaw of a backup plugin…. in the same way that, if I load up my small truck with a 30-tonne burden, and the axle starts to creak, then it’s not exactly a design flaw in the truck – it’s more up to me as the operator to decide how I’m going to spread the load. (N.B. It’s not even possible, if security is set up properly, for one site to know what another is doing – it’s only the hosting company who knows that several sites are on the same account and decides to apply a joint limit).

    David

    Thread Starter billabong1985

    (@billabong1985)

    Hi, thanks for the response, I fully understand that if backups were running simultaneously that it would indeed affect performance. The major performance issues I encountered however were present when the plugin wasn’t doing anything, no running backups, just idle in the background. Deactivating the plugin on all sites immediately brought them back to normal running speed so I can only assume it was struggling to cope with being installed on multiple sites within the same shared host environment

    Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    Hi,

    UD doesn’t have any code to do anything in the background, except for running backups. (What could it be doing? There isn’t anything to do, unless you’ve requested a backup). So, it sounds like either a backup was running, or the hosting company keeps a cumulative count (i.e. a rolling window) of resource usage of some sort.

    Actually – perhaps you had the UD main “Status” tab open in a browser? This polls for backup status every few seconds (whether one is already started or not – because there are many ways of starting backups, so it has to poll for whether one’s started). If you move away from that tab, or close the UD settings page entirely, then that’ll stop. Though, your web hosting company limits would have to be pretty low to be upset by that (has been seen, though).

    David

    Thread Starter billabong1985

    (@billabong1985)

    I obviously can’t speak as to what the plugin was or was not doing behind the scenes, I can only speak of what I experienced. The performance issues I’ve mentioned were present when I wasn’t on the UD status page, they were present when I wasn’t even logged in to the WP admin panel (I struggled to even get to the login page), and the issues vanished immediately when I finally got in and deactivated the plugin on all sites. Maybe it was conflicting with something else, or maybe something about the way my host has the server set up was objecting to it, I honestly don’t know, all I know is that my sites were practically unusable when it was installed on them all, and have been running normally since I removed it

    James

    Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    OK, thanks.

    I’m pretty much out of suggestions, as it’s not something we have any other reports or experience of.

    Unless, perhaps a scheduled backup been set. These default to “5 minutes from now”. So if set on several sites in a similar time-frame, that would lead to multiple sites backing up at the same time.

    Or, it could just be a timing coincidence. UD is downloaded by users around 50,000 times a week. It’d be an unusual week if there isn’t someone who happens to set it up at the same time as their server has an unrelated issue.

    David

    Thread Starter billabong1985

    (@billabong1985)

    Only other thing I can think, I had 3 sites set to back up to the same dropbox account, does the plugin have any known issues with using the same destination for more than one backup source?

    James

    Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    No, that shouldn’t be a problem.

    Thread Starter billabong1985

    (@billabong1985)

    In that case I think we’ll just have to chalk it up to something about my setup that it objects to which will remain a bit of a mystery. Thank you for taking the time to respond though and offer some suggestions

    James

    Plugin Author David Anderson

    (@davidanderson)

    Thank you likewise!

    David

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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