Yandex Cloud Backup overview
Yandex Cloud Backup is a service for creating backups and restoring Yandex Cloud resources and their data. Backup and recovery is available for Compute Cloud VMs with supported operating systems.
Note
Cloud Backup also supports Yandex BareMetal server backups. For details, see Connecting a BareMetal server to Cloud Backup.
BareMetal will be released at the Preview stage in Q4 2024.
Note
Cloud Backup also supports Yandex BareMetal server backups. For details, see Connecting a BareMetal server to Cloud Backup.
BareMetal will be released at the Preview stage in Q4 2024.
VM backups are application-consistent: they save not only the data stored on disks but also the data already sent but not yet fully written. This allows you to resume applications that were running at the time of creating a backup directly after recovering a VM. This is important for VMs forming a part of data storage systems, e.g., those hosting a DBMS.
Cloud Backup can create full and incremental backups. A full backup stores the whole VM data: recovery takes place 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 created faster and takes up less space. However, recovery from an incremental backup takes longer than from a full one. If you know your VM to have 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.
To enable backups for your VM, you need to connect it to the service and configure it. For more information, see Connecting Compute Cloud VMs to Cloud Backup.
Note
When creating a backup, make sure the VM is running.
Once you have connected your instance to Cloud Backup and set it up, you need to link it to a backup policy that is, to a Cloud Backup resource. The policy includes settings for creating and storing backups. You can link your instances to default policies or create custom policies.
Cloud Backup automatically delivers metrics on the number of protected VMs and the storage space used by backups to Yandex Monitoring.
The service has two types of restrictions: quotas and limits.
Comparison with 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 on its page in the management console (see the getting started tutorial) or connect your first VM to Cloud Backup: the service will activate automatically in this case.
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 VM backup with the last 15 backups retained.Default weekly: Weekly incremental VM backup with the last 15 backups retained.Default monthly: Monthly incremental VM backup with the last 15 backups retained.