Question on full backups?

IF you was to backup the database and save all the files in your dolphin directory and then move it on to a larger server, would you have to go through the whole install process again? or would it fail to function correctly even if new server has same settings as the old one?

This would probably be a kind of question to ask any techy on here? or someone who has moved onto a new server. I use a dedicated server and have full access so I cant ask for someone else to move the files so trying to find out now incase I run into any problems when the time comes to move servers.

It is going to depend on how you have your server set up.  If you are using cPanel, it has a full backup of the cPanel that will capture the site and database; or you can do separate ones.

In my case I use the tar command to create an archive with the -p switch to save file permissions and group/owner of the files.  I backup the database separately and when I am ready to move to a new server I can just untar the archive, import the database and I am ready to go.  Since the archive can be large with an active site with lots of members you may want to use rsync or sftp to move the archive from the old server to the new server unless you have direct access to the server.

I have centos 6.7 with plesk 12 panel. And moving servers is quite new to me should it be needed in the future. But someone has mention to install (rsnapshot) via SSH so I'm looking at that option aswell.

My question about rsync is will it transfer the current server settings and installs like java and php configurations from previous server? Or would I have to install them all over again with the whole wget commands?

You might want to look at having an image of your server created.

Plesk has the ability to create account backups from the Backup Manager, and download them. If the new server also has Plesk, you can run a transfer or restore a Plesk backup, and the entire account and its settings will be restored intact. The server will need to be setup to meet requirements, but your host may be able to take care of this if they also setup the server for you.