Plesk backup to Google Drive

Do you want to backup your Plesk configuration to Google Drive? This article will explain to you how to set that up. As a bonus, this article will also explain to you how to solve the ‘Cannot read public key’ error.

Steps

Let’s start by logging in to your Plesk instance.
Navigate to Tools & Settings and locate Backup Manager under Tools & Resources
Here you can click on Remote Storage Settings, now select Google Drive Backup. If either of these buttons is not available you have to install the Google Drive Backup extension via the Extensions page.
In the Google Drive Backup settings, you have to enter the folder you want to save the backups to, enable the checksum check, and link your Google account.

Now go back to the Backup Manager and select Backup now.
Make sure to select Both server storage and Google Drive at My Drive/Plesk, to upload to Google drive. Select a Full backup type and click OK.
Plesk will now backup to Google Drive.

In case you want your backups to run automagically enter the desired details in Schedule and Settings in the Backup Manager.

Cannot read public key

If your backup contains an exclamation mark as the status something didn’t fully go as planned.
The Backup Manager will show the information if you hover over the exclamation mark or it will show it in the top of the page as shown below.

The backup Feb 1, 2023 12:06 AM was created and can be restored, although some minor issues occurred. Download the log file View the log Close this message

In case the above message is available click on View the log. If the error shown below is displayed, we have good news! There is a solution.

Unable to create the remote backup: Cannot read public key

To solve this problem you need access to the server Plesk is running on. In this article, we assume that it is a Linux machine.
After logging in to your machine type the command below, this will allow you to upload your backups to Google Drive.

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/backup_sign --generate

Sources

• Unable to create or restore backup on Plesk server: Can’t find public key in database (support.plesk.com)