yup
Interesting; I have the Hubitat Administration, and it appears to cover both my C7 and C8.
Remote Admin covers all hubs on the account.
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Coming up to speed (sorry, late to the party) on Hubitat Protect and backups.
I thought that Hubitat Protect was cloud backups (vs local). Apparently a decision was made to NOT include radio (Zigbvee and Z-Wave) backups in the local copies.
Re-pairing for many is an option, but for me that involves 22 devices... no small effort.
Feels like the cloud backup option needs to be made even more obvious....? Both in the documentation and the steps for the migration...?
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Radios have never been part of the Local backup. For migration to the C-8 there is an option, if the hub is on the latest release, to create a Cloud backup for migration without the need for a Hub Protection subscription. Cloud backup is also the only native* backup that includes the File Manager Files.
*There is a community offering for a separate File Manager backup.
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Wow, I had no idea the local backups were intentionally crippled to force upselling the cloud service. My estimation of Hubitat just went down by several points.
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Could I ask how you know this? Yes cloud backups are the only backups that include radios, but how do you know this was done for upselling as opposed to a technical reason?
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Please enlighten me as to the 'technical reason'?
30 bucks? What does that buy nowadays? Maybe a meal and a glass of wine around here, and that's not a high rent district.
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Think you have the wrong impression there. Local backups were not crippled, they were designed to give recoverability of apps, etc in the event if user error or upgrade that corrupted an individual hub's database. The cloud backups were added later as a means to start providing some hub level recoverability and were made possible by advances in the ZWave and ZigBee SDKs and chips.
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You cannot cripple something that it was never part of. The cloud backup was added as part of the Hub Protect service, which was released in March 2021, about 3 years after the local backup was available.
What good does it do to get a free hub when your old dies, if you have to spend countless hours running around the house to re-connect devices to it. Thus, cloud backup was a requirement to make Hub Protect a seamless experience, and finally the new C-8 hub delivers that.
At $29.99/year (or less), I think the service is a no brainer for those who value their time and effort they put into building their smart home.
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This sounds like a choice so I don't think I have the wrong impression at all. Local backups may have been the only option at one time but that's no longer the case. A decision was made to add value to the cloud service by not allowing for fully recoverable local backups. I've heard no 'techical reason' for the local backups not being fully recoverable like the cloud backup.
Exactly the upselling I'm talking about. Thanks for making my point. I have to spend hours reconnecting unless I pony up the extra bucks. That's basically the argument here.
I do understand, this was a business decision not a technical one.
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I am not following. You can buy a new hub and get free migration, or subscribe to Hub Protect and get a free hub to have the same seamless migration. The choice is yours.
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Shame, shame on you Hubitat, for having a business model (the horror!!), and for providing options to your customers that offer peace of mind and could save them money. Every other company in the world simply gives away new capabilities & features they gain access to/develop over time.
How dare you. 
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While I have no need for file backups, I do like making my own local db backups on a daily schedule. I'm not stuck with a certain number (5?) of backups that, in some scenario, could be messed up. I could be wrong, but I think 5 is the number for cloud backups.
Not to be forgotten is that a replacement hub is part of the plan.
It's insurance.
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How dare Hubitat charge money for an extended warranty that never expires as long as you keep your subsciption current. This should be free of charge for all users.
You can't seriously subscribe to the above argument.
As far as POSSIBLE technical reasons, here are two:
- Radio Back-up and Restore requires specific conditions to be met (certain versions of both hub software and radio software). HE can obviously control this process with cloud backup, but cannot with local. This could lead to a support nightmare.
- I imagine HE must adhere to Silicon Labs licensing agreement to use their zwave chip. It is possible this licensing agreement does not allow for the end-user to download a file that details the radio functionality of the chip.
Now you have heard of "technical reasons" for the local backups being as they are. Are these technical reasons accurate? I have no idea, I don't work for Hubitat. Should HE affirm or deny if these reasons are accurate? Of course not, we have no right as end-users to know this.
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You can't seriously be suggesting this is my argument?
This was my point in response to the technical reasons argument. It's a business model not a technical limitation. The fully recoverable backups make it worth the cost considering the time investment.
I am meticulous with backups. Having suffered from a hard drive failure where the backup drive also failed. I maintain at least three copies of the backups even.
It's not about the cost. I remain disappointed that the local backups are so limited. I prefer to manage my backups myself but didn't realize how limited the local backups were.
My C-8 just arrived so I'll be focusing on that from here on so back on topic...
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When you purchase nearly any piece of electronic equipment, either the manufacturer or reseller typically offers you the opportunity of an extended warranty. Such plans are also offered for automobiles, appliances, etc. When presented with such opportunities, you can either accept them or reject them. As a matter of principle, I generally reject extended warranties as I consider myself to be self-insured for such devices. However, with the Hubitat Elevation, the price of the equipment pales in comparison to the value of my time setting up devices and developing rules to control them. Thus, I see the price of the extended warranty (aka Hub Protect) being a very wise investment. I hope I will never have to use the protection, but I would be very angry if my hub were to fail and I had to recreate everything from scratch. The price of hub protect is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Thus, I am very glad that Hubitat offers that option at such a reasonable price.
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You said it yourself; there are people that pay for insurance, and people that self insure. I have my own NAS for backups, and a NAS to backup that (compressed).
My Hubitat backups along with all my other backups are stored locally. Hubitat is proud of the fact that you are not dependent on the internet for home automation. I wish that extended to backups.
Hubitat Protect should be for those who choose to have a CLOUD based backup. If my place burns down, my "self insurance" won't be worth much.
Having discovered that my local backups are only partial (no radio backup), I'm disappointed.
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