Let's discuss backup strategy

[Guy Lavoie]

After being a UDI user for just over a year now, I've noticed a few things with being involved with the hardware/software and the community.

- There is often excitement...and trepidation when new releases of IoX come out. I've seen the birth of 5.9.1, Matter support, and now 6.0.0 and eisy-ui. It appears that it's not rare that something doesn't quite turn out as expected and the update causes some users to not be able to reconnect with their controller, and require some extra manual steps (ie: pkg install ...) to get it working. In some cases it just fails and a ticket is needed. Other times there are some unexplained effects, like the "small filesystem" that a few of us ended up with on a Polisy.

- A few of us have more than one controller. Myself I have a eisy actually running things, and two Polisys. Sometimes it happens from having upgraded from one to the other, or by chancing upon a unit for cheap or free. I certainly enjoy have the two Polisys for experimenting. When a new release comes out, I'll try it on a test controller (Polisy) first. It's a great, risk-free way of trying things out and learning about new stuff, like eisy-ui. Having the ability to reflash the SSD on a Polisy adds greatly to the "risks" we can take! I like to try things that would be quite foolhardy on a running system.

My reason for starting this thread is that I'd like to see what people are doing for backup. Not just file backups as we see in the menus, but actual operational backup, in case our main controller fails (failed upgrade or whatever). A lot of us have come to depend on our controllers, and having voice control with Alexa has often widened the user base to our families too. When things stop working, we quickly get called upon to "fix it!".

At minimum, A serious (read: highly dependent) user should at least have a spare PLM, and a spare power supply for the controller isn't a bad idea either. Having a spare controller is a bit more expensive, and moving our operations to another one when our main one fails isn't exactly a simple process. In fact that's the real reason I'm starting this discussion: does anyone have that kind of plan? How are you doing it, to be in a state of readiness? For the purpose of this discussion, let's stick to switching between eisy and Polisy (both: between same type of controller, or from one to the other). Several sticking points come to mind:

- Zwave: how do you backup zwave when you have a zooz stick? Is it included in the main IoX backup? The Zmatter dongle offers a backup/restore menu, but zooz doesn't. With Zmatter, is it as simple as moving the dongle over and restoring the zmatter backup? How about zooz? If you have a Zmatter dongle insie a Polisy, you'll need an adapter if you want to be able to quickly move to a eisy.

- Insteon: usually that just requires you to move the PLM over. But if you have a Polisy with a serial PLM, you'll need a USB to serial adapter.

- IP based connections: If you have plugins, network resources, and especially external devices or apps that send REST commands to your controller, It will be complicated if it ends up with a different IP address. To switch controllers, you'll probably have to play with your router's DHCP address reservations so that your replacement controller has the same IP address as the controller you're replacing.

- Portal access: The difficulty here is that portal subscriptions are based on your controller UUID. And that is based on the network card's MAC address. Even if UDI moves over your subscription to your new UUID, do you have to manually recreate all the device definitions? Or can UDI actually reassign all the definitions to the new UUID at the same time? This still means that you can't quickly move over to another controller, without external support.

- Plugins: This is probably the most complicated part, especially with paid plugins. I know that the plugins pathnames include the UUID of the controller. Can plugins be backed up and restored on a different controller without external intervention.

I think we have enough here for getting a good discussion going...

 

 

[Geddy]

On 10/7/2025 at 4:22 PM, Guy Lavoie said:

My reason for starting this thread is that I'd like to see what people are doing for backup.

At the top level of just the file level of backup...since I will make random changes or programs to help others here just about anytime I open Admin Console I run a backup right away. That way I know I have a "that moment" backup to rever to if something I do goes south.

Otherwise, if it's just for personal change reasons I always make sure to make a backup after I make a change in something (either device setting or program change). Again, so I know I have a backup right then. 

All my backups are saved to a Dropbox folder so they're available on other computers I have so if my primary computer crashes the backups are available. 

On 10/7/2025 at 4:22 PM, Guy Lavoie said:

actual operational backup, in case our main controller fails (failed upgrade or whatever)

Operationally I have 1 backup PLM that is "NIB" (new in box) that I got from Insteon before they closed so it has a couple of years on it being in the box. I have a backup serial conversion cable in case my current cable from eisy to PLM goes bad.

I have a box of "spare" Insteon devices that would replace the most used devices in the house. It's not a large box, but it's enough to replace devices should they fail and get me back up and running quickly rather than having to order new from Insteon (again, from before their close when items were more difficult to source than they are currently). 

Z-wave - I only have a small number of devices in use that if they die they won't be replaced. They aren't mission critical currently and only used in random programs.

Zigbee - never got into this one. Only have one device and that's just a thermometer/humidistat device so if it goes south I'd probably never know. I only got it for testing Zigbee when it went live.

UD Portal - I'm not sure what you mean by having to recreate definitions if UD moves your license to a new UUID. I think they made a process that you can migrate the license to a new device and it does move everything over. If you have them manually move it then I do think you have to recreate everything. 

Gret thought and conversation start. I probably don't fit the mold of so many here that tend to have things so tightly integrated and reliant on commingling different systems. I'm no ultra power user, by any means. If my system went down (for a few hours, or days) I would be able to manually turn on any light in the house that I would need on (or off). My eisy and Insteon devices are more for convience and my automation is built around 7+ years of how we want our house to look/feel during the day and based on where we are in the house. It's not overly complicated and just works for us.