Since when is ANY home automation hub an "item of convience" What hub manufacture does a plug and play that you just go to any store buy the hub and presto your house is now automated?
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I donāt believe youāre thinking beyond the niche factor. Everything that replaces thought or effort and does a task is an item of convenience. Youāre not washing clothes in the creek, you have a washer. HA is a niche product exactly because it involves time and effort to be. I know many whom would love an automated home, but since their lives have other more enjoyable ( to them ) factors itās not practical. I would say a ton of people purchase HA products and after the initial futzing to make things work, abandon it soon there after.
Iām not even sure what people are arguing/talking about at this point... or why for that matter. The hub is backing up what it has always backed up.
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The issue with the free backup is, as many of you have already pointed out, that it doesnāt include a backup of the Zigbee and Zwave devices. In the early days of HE, this was not as big of a problem as it is now because the wireless radio was a USB connected dongle. If the hub died you would just take your backup and restore it to another HE hub and move the dongle from the dead hub to the new. Restore complete with no devices that required to be re-paired again.
The lack of backups of the wireless devices DB (which is located on the radio chip) began to be an issue with the C5 where the radios were built in (though international versions of the hub still came with a Zwave dongle as the built in Zwave radio only did US frequencies).
I only have very basic understanding of the challenges with providing a backup that will include all connected devices and not require them to be re-paired again, but I can understand why it might be difficult to achieve. Now, I havenāt done this for some time, but if you restore a phone backup to a new phone, does that actually include devices paired with your old phone (that is Bluetooth connected devices) or do you have to re-pair them after a restore? If you can or not will depend on the wireless protocol (Bluetooth, Zigbee or Zwave) and whether or not you can take a backup of the devices and move it to a new piece of hardware without having to re-pair the devices. After all, the devices have been paired with a piece of hardware with a certain signature and they trust that hardware. Moving them to another piece of hardware with a different signature should make the device refuse to connect to it as it is not the piece of hardware that the device has been paired with. So I guess it comes down to the security of the protocols to see if a restore to new hardware can somehow be achieved. As I said before, I donāt know if this can be done with Bluetooth devices, but Hubitat have figured out a way how to do this with Zwave but not with Zigbee. I donāt know if they are still working on getting Zigbee to work as well or not, but hopefully they are.
The community has for a long time been pleading to Hubitat to offer extended optional functionality on a subscription basis as the community couldnāt see how a business model just based on hardware sales was sustainable. The service to back up the Zwave radios (and have the deal sweetened with extended warranty) is entirely optional and is not required to make your hub function properly. It also provides Hubitat a new income stream from the people that decide that they want this feature.
IMHO, Hubitat made the right choice to make it a subscription service. I can now decide myself if the subscription cost is worth the extra services it provides. I do though agree that the limitation of the free backups is poorly advertised. A sticky post on the forum and/or a mention of this on the backup page on the hub would be great. I didnāt realise myself that radios were not included in the backup until after a year on the forum. Having said that, that was about the time when the C5 was introduced so thatās when the lack of radio backups really started to be an issue.
I donāt know if this post will make anyone more informed or more confused or if it will relieve any frustration. Itās my 2 cents to the conversation.
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Some of us just wanted the option and were willing to pay extra for it 
.
I trust them to know whether or not their business model is sustainable. Customers arenāt privy to the information needed to make that kind of conclusion about a small, privately held tech startup, so IMHO itās a waste of time to worry about it.
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So on the original topic, I think there are a few more things to be aware of:
-
If you restore a backup ( or hub protect) onto a new hub, the new hub has new Mac addresses and hubUUIDs. This can be an issue if you have integration with external (or local) REST/http calls to the hub, as the endpoints and keys will be different.
-
it would be nice if the hub protect service could put everything back on a new/replacement hub, such that there are no changes. I do understand the technical limitation for zigbee, and likely there will be similar issues if bluetooth is ever supported. It would be good if they could deal with the IP addresses and hubUUIDs to make this more seamless. I'm sure there are security issues in this to watch if someone sold or otherwise passed on the replaced hub.
I do agree a lot of folks would expect restore to restore everything, but even when you replace a phone there are security things you have to manually reset that are tied to HW ids and security IDs of the specific phone.
In general I'm sure the problems HE team is dealing with this are these HW/security IDs, that they may or may not control, and the question of can they control them 'securely'.
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My understanding is that the local backup is a backup of the Database, and thatās it.
I expect it not to include:
- Z-Wave Pairings
- Files in the local storage (used by some apps like Hubigraph for Long Term Storage)
- Users associated to the hub (Not sure about that oneā¦)
- Etc.
Also, all backup solutions require re-pairing of Zigbee devices. They will automatically slot in to the original device, but it will be necessary to ātouchā every Zigbee device.
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So many words...
So many of us who still don't know what gets backed up, what we can best do to optimally protect our systems, or what we're really getting from the new subscription service. That's all many of us really want to understand...
I'll try to summarize
-
built in backup
- backs up database
- if you restore to the same HW
- (and did not hard reset it), you should keep your pairings
- keeps your hub UUID, Mac address
- should keep your files
- if you restore to different HW (and for most part if you do a hard reset)
- you will have to re-pair zwave and Zigbee
- you will not have local files restored
- you will have a new Hub UUID (does not change on hard reset of same HW)
- which means any integrations using endpoints will need new endpoints - you will have a new Mac address (possibily IP address depending if you use DHCP vs. static addressing). (does not change on hard reset of same HW)
-
hub protect
- on C4
- is really the same as local backup above
- on C5 (USA only), C7(all) (and I assume later HW)
- does DB backup + zwave backup
- if you restore to same HW (without Hard reset)
- should put everything back
- if you restore to different HW (C5, C7, or later)
- zwave should be fine
- you will have to re-pair Zigbee
- you get new HUBUUID and Mac address
- which means any integrations using endpoints will need new endpoints
- you will not have local files restored
- on C4
-
I'm not sure on hub users / admins on above
-
I'm. not sure on other hub settings configured during setup or via 'Settings'; or extra device configurations done at 'settings'
My view is the changing HUB uuid and endpoints is one the biggest weaknesses of hub protect. These can be painful to fix, as it commonly may involve many systems, pistons, rules, integrations that have to be fixed.
- it would be better if the hub uuid was virtualized / maintained, as you can maintain your ip addresses today if you choose static.
- it would be good for security to be able to change the hubuuid as I think it is part of endpoint URLs.
Not a lot of integrations use files, but those that do would like the files to be backed up and restored.
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It's like comparing backup and clone. When you make a backup and you put it on a new computer, you have to manually reinstall a lot of things (programs). The backup is only for the data. When you clone a machine, you have everything, including the installed malwares...
So for me, backup of HE was understood as "copy a lot of things" but you need to process other things to obtain a running new device.
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Us 
c5 and all c7
I'm still a little surprised there aren't more people complaining/isn't a big warning that your C-7 hub may reboot on execution of cloud backups... Happens if the zwave radio can't restart properly (which on mine, it pretty much never can).
It must not be widespread, people know but it doesn't bother them, or a lot of people don't look for unexpected reboots?
Anyway - It can be quite a surprise if you do any logic on hub startup, monitor for unplanned reboots, etc. Could even make some think their hub is crashing and restarting due to hardware or software issues...
Perhaps so. I haven't seen this happen on my C-7, or two others.
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I have been waiting to hear about a fix. In the meantime, I have disabled the cloud backups.
Thanks to @nh.schottfam for the added clarity, which is appreciated.
This is the first issue where I think Hubitat needs to spend more time and effort to clarify things. It's all very clear to them (and probably a few experts/super enthusiasts) because they do it every day, but for the rest of us, it's confusing. All most people really want is an ability to "undo bad stuff" e.g., a power spike that fries a hub). If we can do that, we're good. I think most people think they should have the ability to do that via a local backup to, say, a PC or Mac (local being a big selling point of Hubitat). But if it can only happen via a cloud service offered by Hubitat, then just stating that, plainly and simply, is the right move. I don't think anyone is trying to be evasive here. I just think the Hubitat staff and super enthusiasts don't realize just how confusing this is, to many users.
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Try this and see if it's what you are looking for:
log in to your hub. Press the green Hubitat logo in the upper left corner. You should be presented with multiple options for information. Select how-to guides, then select "how to backup your hub". There are a few example on this page that include backing up to your computer,
Hope this helps 
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Hi.
When you say you lose your ālocal filesā when migrating to a new hub from a backup, what does it include?
- Custom Apps??
- Custom Drivers??
- Apps config, like Homebridge v2?
I have most of my ZigBee devices using community drivers, will the devices be deleted?
local files are those under Settings | File Manager most people will have nothing there.
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No... All your apps, and custom drivers, and even your zigbee info will be transferred. When you repair a zigbee device it will show "Previously know zigbee device added" and take it's place. All your app settings also will come over. The local files referred to are sound and graphic files and the like that you can put in the storage area for custom stuff apps can use...
