I know! As I said, I feel quite stupid (actually ignorant). That being said, HE is not my life nor am I an IT specialist or data/developer expert. I have a very complex life that, like most of us, creates demands on my time in many areas thus limiting time for "deep dives" in others. Shame on me for trusting something referenced as a "backup" would actually fully perform "backup" duties. Thank-you VERY much for providing the background and insight.
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I read this board almost every morning, and I honestly don't know what backs up, where. Here's something that would be helpful, please:
A single thread/sticky from the nice folks at Hubitat that explains what we need to do to back up our hubs so that, if a hub locks up or bites the dust, we can:
- Try to restore that hub
- Failing that, restore as much as possible to a replacement hub
Without going into a lot of caveats and nuances, I think most people would like to get as close as possible to "push button, new hub works just like old hub", which means all devices and drivers and rules and such are also restored. If that is not possible, a really simple explanation of what doesn't get restored would be helpful. If we can do this locally, please tell us. If we can't backup locally and need one of the new cloud services, please tell us. If there are differences in what can be done with each of these, please tell us exactly what can be done one way, vs. the other. Heck, a little table that compared local vs. cloud service backups would be amazing.
Now, if this has all been done somewhere, that's great. I don't personally know where that might be, or have a grasp on all this, and it sounds like others are in the same situation. So, there ya go. Do it, don't do it, my life won't change much either way. But just an observation that maybe such a post would help clear things up, and might even get some of us to back up our hubs using a service that benefits us, and Hubitat.
End transmission.
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Itās certainly frustrating, and I too feel. Like the words āunlimitedā ālifetimeā āsimpleā, ābackup-restoreā no longer means what they used to mean. I can go anywhere in the world and buy a new phone, tablet, computer, watch and every other personalized device and have it 100% restored pretty much before I leave the store. In the 80ās my X-10 HA configuration was locally backed up and restorable. Through many other HA platforms everything was restorable onto new hardware. I believe the initial push of Hubitat was toward the geekie āI wanna futz with something as a hobbyā crowd ( which is perfectly fine - everyone needs and has hobbies ). I came to Hubitat from Micasavera as my Vera was a few years old and I saw Hubitat was ācoming soonā on some web site. It looked like an āupgradeā to Vera, I had been through a few Vera upgrades and since I was waiting on the new Vera anyway, I figured what the heck. Hubitat is pretty good, but itās only good because of the talents of the people who produce FREE apps. ( like Brian and many others ) who are hobbyists and get hobby satisfaction from their work. Without them Hubitat really is pretty Meh in the scheme of things, especially to people who donāt want HA to be their ādaily hobbyā. Me personally I have a ton of other things in my life that make HA down in the lowest priority of things I would work on if Iām bored. HA to me has always been about having things occur that I donāt need to interact with - saving me from daily items that need to occur repetitively ( climate, sprinklers, lights on / off, and other simple tasks ) I donāt want to āmonitorā my house from afar as I donāt care about it when Iām not there - itās a house, if it burns to the ground or blows away, I get a new one - I donāt care. But while Iām in it, I want the lights to go on when I walk into a dark room, and music when Iām in the garage or workshop.
That said, you are right in feeling that ābackupā indicates āwhole backupā and ārestoreā means ālike it wasā as a seemless operation. Right now - today - Iām OK with Hubitat, when it fails since I need to effectively recreate the system, it will probably be on whatever is the newest hardware out there regardless of who makes it. Now Iām going to go ride my dirt bike, go hiking or fishing and come home to the lights on and the house the perfect temperature - I hope.
Holy 'hit enter once in a while', Batman!
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This is only "recently" the case, it wasn't to long ago when you bought a new cell phone you had to MANUALLY re-enter all your contacts into the new one, and re-download all your previous apps.
You like myself and dozens others here from Vera NEVER experienced this scenario on the Vera platform, which is the reason we are here and not there.
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Ive had a cell phone since 1984, Iāve never re-entered all my contacts. had a Motorola flip phone in the 90s that all my contacts / data transferred from phone to new phone with the Sim. When I got an iPhone 3g at release, it imported all the data too. Itās gotten more automated and without moving a physical sim, but even then you could backup your contacts to a local computer, lose your phone and restore it to any brand of phone with a few clicks, missing only a minor amount of data since the last backup. So if you mean ārecentlyā since the beginning of time then yes, if you mean ārecentlyā as to technology then thatās a no. Iāve still got a backup of a Palm Pilot somewhere from 1998 that could be restored fully to a Palm and probably all the actual important data could be imported into any CSV file and be used.
As far as redownloading the Apps - again, thatās a seemless process and the actual data would be as it was. You donāt have to re-do anything is my point.
To be mainstream items need to work like a refrigerator or a faucet. In the days of VCRs 9 out of 10 were blinking 12:00 because people couldnāt be bothered to learn how to set the clock. You canāt convince or expect people to want āitems of convenienceā that need to have time spent on them to save time. Lifeās too short for that. Iāve spent more time on HA than itās ever going to really benefit me, but itās a cheap novelty.
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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