Yandex Cloud Backup overview
Yandex Cloud Backup is a service for creating backups and restoring Yandex Cloud resources and their data. Backup and recovery are available for Compute Cloud VMs created from supported Cloud Marketplace images as well as for Yandex BareMetal servers with supported operating systems.
Note
You cannot restore a VM backup to a BareMetal server, nor restore a BareMetal server backup to a VM.
For information on using BareMetal servers, see Connecting a BareMetal server to Cloud Backup. BareMetal is at the Preview stage.
VM and BareMetal server backups are application-consistent: they save not only the data on disks but also the data already submitted but not yet fully written to the disk. This allows you to resume applications that were running at the time of the backup directly after recovering a VM or BareMetal server from the backup. This is important for VMs and servers forming a part of data storage systems, such as when a DBMS is running on the VM or BareMetal server.
Cloud Backup can create full and incremental backups. A full backup stores the whole of the VM or BareMetal server data: the recovery is faster than from an incremental backup, yet such backups take up more storage space and take longer to be created. An incremental backup only stores data that is different from the previous backup. It is faster to create and takes up less space. However, recovery from an incremental backup takes longer than from a full one. If you know your VM or BareMetal server has changed a lot since the previous backup, it is better to make a full backup.
With Cloud Backup, you can also restore individual files and directories from a backup to any VM connected to the service. For more information, see File-by-file recovery. File-by-file recovery to BareMetal servers is currently not available.
To enable backups for a VM or BareMetal server, you first need to have it connected and configured. For more information, see Connecting Compute Cloud VMs and Yandex BareMetal servers to Cloud Backup.
Note
When initiating a backup, make sure the VM or BareMetal server is running.
Once you have connected your VM or BareMetal server to Cloud Backup and configured it, you need to link it to a backup policy, i.e., a Cloud Backup resource. The policy includes settings for creating and storing backups. You can link your VMs and BareMetal servers to default policies or create custom policies.
Cloud Backup automatically delivers metrics on the number of protected VMs and BareMetal servers, as well as storage space used by backups, to Yandex Monitoring.
The service has two types of restrictions: quotas and limits.
Comparison with VM disk snapshots in Compute Cloud
| Disk snapshots in Compute Cloud | Cloud Backup | |
|---|---|---|
| Granularity | Disk | VMs with all disks. We may also add support for VM application backups. |
| Disk types | Network SSDs and HDDs | Any: Network SSD and HDD, non-replicated disks, and local disks on dedicated hosts |
| Application awareness | No | To be implemented |
| Pricing | Per disk | Per VM |
| Required VM status | You can create a snapshot on stopped or running VMs. | You can only create a backup on a running VM with an agent installed. |
Service activation and backup provider
Cloud Backup is enabled by a backup provider. Currently, the service only has one provider available: Cyberprotect.
To get started, you need to activate the service, i.e., to connect to a backup provider. You can activate the service directly or connect your first VM or BareMetal server to Cloud Backup, which activates the service automatically.
The minimum folder role required to activate the service is backup.editor (see its description for details).
After activation, the system automatically creates the following backup policies:
Default daily: Daily incremental backup with the last 15 backups retained.Default weekly: Weekly incremental backup with the last 15 backups retained.Default monthly: Monthly incremental backup with the last 15 backups retained.