Chapter 1 of 14
What VaultPilot does
Understand the product boundary before protecting production data.
VaultPilot is self-hosted backup software for regular files, folders, application exports, and other filesystem data. It creates compressed encrypted archives, writes SHA-256 integrity records, tracks operations, and can test whether an archive decrypts and extracts successfully.
Core concepts
- Backup set
- A named group of approved source locations that run together as one repeatable backup operation.
- Archive
- The compressed and encrypted output produced by a successful backup. Archives must remain paired with their integrity records and accessible encryption recovery material.
- Restore verification
- An isolated test that checks integrity, decrypts, tests compression, extracts content, confirms the archive is not empty, and removes temporary plaintext data.
- Schedule eligibility
- A backup set becomes eligible for scheduled operation after it has a completed backup with a passed restore verification.
Product boundary
- VaultPilot verifies archive readability; it does not certify that every application can start from restored files.
- Live databases require a database-supported dump, export, or storage-consistent snapshot before filesystem backup.
- VaultPilot does not replace an independent off-site or offline copy.
- Email and webhook delivery are optional. The dashboard remains the authoritative local operation record.