VIP CLI: Improvements to the Media Import tool

We’re pleased to announce a feature enhancement driven by customer feedback, which will allow you to move faster, by importing a larger media file archive in one go.

Going forward, the maximum size of media files archive that you can import with the vip import media command has been raised to 200 GB. This is an increase from the 60 GB limit that was in place prior to this.

You can read more about importing media into your environments over at our documentation.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, and we will be happy to help.

Completed: VaultPress Deprecation

We have reached the end of the VaultPress deprecation process. VaultPress is now disabled across the VIP Platform, and is no longer available for use on VIP environments.

You can continue to access your data through our convenient VIP Dashboard and VIP-CLI features, see below.

What does this mean?

If you’re a customer that has been using the VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD PHP constant to continue using VaultPress to create backups for your environments, even after the deprecation on the 29th of March, you will no longer be able to do so. VaultPress will no longer be connected to your site environments, which means that no VaultPress backups will be generated. You will also lose access to the VaultPress Dashboard.

Customers that have not been using the VIP_VAULTPRESS_SKIP_LOAD PHP constant will also no longer be able to access the VaultPress Dashboard. VaultPress itself has been disconnected from your site environments since the 29th of March – so there have been no VaultPress backups generated since then.

Manage and export data with VIP tools

There are several ways to export and manage your data from the VIP Platform:

  • From the VIP Dashboard – choose to export the entire database, a single network site (for multisites), or specific tables
  • Using the  VIP-CLI command vip export sql

Managing data access through the VIP Dashboard and VIP-CLI allows us to provide a clear, simple, and secure service for your team. The VIP Dashboard user management system allows for regulation of access control, enhancing security and easing the workload for onboarding and offboarding processes.

All crucial interactions such as generation and download events are systematically tracked and recorded in the Audit Log, providing a clear record of significant system interactions. 

On-demand database backups

You can now trigger a database backup on-demand before exporting it using the VIP CLI.  The capability to trigger a database backup via the VIP Dashboard will follow soon.

Generating a backup for download will ensure that you are working with the most up to date data and should provide you all the tools needed to efficiently and confidently deploy applications. 

Please reach out to VIP Support with any questions or concerns you may have.

Feature Update: Export database backups generated on-demand

We’re thrilled to announce that we have expanded our VIP-CLI dev-env export sql command to include an option to generate a new backup and export it. This new feature is a step towards ensuring that you have access to the latest data of your application.

vip export sql @<your-application-id>.<environment-name> --generate-backup

The --generate-backup command option triggers the creation of a new database backup before the CLI downloads it onto your machine. If this option is not used, the database backup for your environment which was last generated by our systems will be downloaded (which is also the default behaviour of this command).

Here is an example of the new command option:

vip @0000.production export sql --generate-backup

NOTICE: A new database backup will only be generated for this environment if a recent backup does not already exist. Learn more about this: https://docs.wpvip.com/technical-references/vip-dashboard/backups/#0-limitations

Creating a new database backup...
✓ Preparing
✓ Generating backup
New database backup created
✓ Preparing
✓ Creating backup copy
✓ Requesting download link
✓ Downloading file - 100.00% (39.57 KB/39.57 KB)
File saved to /Users/home/2023-06-21T1404UTC-environment.go-vip.net-abcdefghijkl-db-backup.sql.gz

Please note that this feature has rate limits associated with it. Please take a look at the related documentation for more details on this.

To use this feature, please run npm install -g @automattic/vip to get the latest version of VIP-CLI. Verify that your VIP-CLI installation is on version 2.32.0 or above, by running vip --version from the terminal. You can learn more about this feature from our documentation.

We would love to know what you think. How do you hope to use these new tools? What could be added to improve your experience? Feel free to get in touch!

New Feature: Download specific tables from database backups

Two weeks ago, we released a new feature that opened the doors to partial database backups by allowing you to download a database backup for only a specific network site in a WordPress multisite.

Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re following that up with something that will allow you even more granularity while downloading database backups. 

Specifying the tables you need to download

You can now choose the specific tables you want to download. This works for both WordPress single site and multisite, on VIP.

This not only gives you a higher level of control over your data for more targeted usage like analysis, testing, and launch, it can also save you a lot of time.

To access the new controls, click on the “Configure Download” button. Selecting the “Specific Tables” option will allow you to specify the database table names that you need in your backup copy in the input box that will appear.

Configure database backups for WordPress Multisites on VIP
Configure database backups for WordPress single sites on VIP

Learn more about downloading specific tables from database backups in our documentation.

We’d love to know what you think about this feature; please get in touch!

Customers using VaultPress

Downloading database backups via the VIP Dashboard now provides a great deal of flexibility. You can choose to download the entire database, all the tables relating to one network site in a multisite, or a list of specific tables. 

We will be releasing further feature improvements in the near future to make working with your data even more convenient, particularly for customers using our VIP Local Development Environment.We encourage you to try these features, and let us know if it meets your needs.