# Reusable backup templates with variables

**Project:** Panel | **Board:** Planned | **Votes:** 1
**URL:** https://roadmap.ploi.io/projects/3-panel-requests/items/1509-reusable-backup-templates-with-variables

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**Idea**

Allow users to define backup templates (with tokens/variables for things like paths, intervals, retention, and passwords) and attach multiple sites or databases to a single template instead of creating a separate backup configuration for each one.

**Why?**

Users running GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) schemes currently need ~4 backup configurations per database (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly) plus one for files. At scale this becomes unmanageable. A user with 50 databases ends up maintaining 200+ individual backup configurations. The existing profile-level backup configurations only define the storage destination (provider/bucket), but not the schedule, paths, retention, or password (per server), so they don't solve this.

**Proposed solution**

Template-based backup configurations that:
* Support variables/tokens for dynamic values (e.g. server name, database name or interval in path)
* Bundle schedule, interval, retention, and ZIP password
* Can be attached to many databases/sites at once
* Can be scoped per-server

**Outcome**

The example of 50 databases on GFS would maintain ~4 templates instead of 200+ individual configurations, with changes propagating to all attached resources automatically.