Creating a Linux VM with a connection to Cloud Backup

Written by

Yandex Cloud

Improved by

Danila N.

Updated at March 17, 2026

Getting started
Creating a VM

You can back up your Compute Cloud VMs with supported Linux-based operating systems.

For the proper Cloud Backup agent operation, the VM must meet the minimum requirements.

Getting started

Create a service account with the backup.user role or higher.

Note

You do not have to use a service account when creating a VM using the management console. However, the user creating the VM must have the backup.user role or higher for the folder in which the VM is created.
Set up network access for your VM.

Creating a VM

Note

If you are using LVM to manage the disk space of the protected resource, learn how to restore resources with LVM in Cloud Backup.

Management console

CLI

In the management console, select the folder where you want to create a VM.
Go to Compute Cloud.
In the left-hand panel, select Virtual machines and click Create virtual machine.
Under Boot disk image, select an operating system supported in Cloud Backup.
Under Location, select the availability zone where your VM will reside.
Under Network settings:
1. Choose a subnet in the selected availability zone.
2. In the Public IP address field, select Auto.
3. Select a security group configured to work with Cloud Backup.
Under Access, select SSH key and specify the VM access credentials:
- In the Login field, enter the username.
- In the SSH key field, select the SSH key saved in your organization user profile.
If your profile has no SSH keys, click Add key to add a new key.
Enable Backup, and in the Backup policies field, select a backup policy for Cloud Backup to use for the VM.

If you do not have any backup policy, click Create to create one.

To create a new VM with a Cloud Backup connection, your account must have the backup.user role or higher for the folder you are creating the VM in.

Note

If your account does not have the backup.user role or higher, you can connect the VM to Cloud Backup using a service account which has that role.

To do this, expand the Additional section and select the service account under Service account. If required, create a new service account and assign it the backup.user role.

Tip

Installing a Cloud Backup agent is a resource-intensive operation. If you want to use a VM in the minimum possible configuration or, for example, a VM with a vCPU performance level below 100%, we recommend increasing the VM's resources during the Cloud Backup agent installation.

For more information, see Connecting Compute Cloud VMs and Yandex BareMetal servers to Cloud Backup.
Under General information, specify the VM name and description. The naming requirements are as follows:
- Length: between 3 and 63 characters.
- It can only contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
- It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.
Note

The VM name is used to generate an internal FQDN, which is set only once, when you create the VM. If the internal FQDN is important to you, make sure to choose an appropriate name for your VM.
Specify the other VM parameters as needed. For more information, see Creating a VM from a public Linux image.
Click Create VM.

When the VM switches to the Running status, the Cloud Backup agent will start installing on it. This may take from 5 to 10 minutes.

Select a folder:

yc resource-manager folder list

Result:

+----------------------+--------------------+------------------+--------+
|          ID          |        NAME        |      LABELS      | STATUS |
+----------------------+--------------------+------------------+--------+
| wasdcjs6be29******** | my-folder          |                  | ACTIVE |
| qwertys6be29******** | default            |                  | ACTIVE |
+----------------------+--------------------+------------------+--------+

Select a subnet:

yc vpc subnet list --folder-id <folder_ID>

Result:

+----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
|          ID          |           NAME            |      NETWORK ID      | ROUTE TABLE ID |       ZONE        |      RANGE      |
+----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+
| b0c6n43f9lgh******** | default-ru-central1-d     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-d     | [10.***.0.0/24] |
| e2l2da8a20b3******** | default-ru-central1-b     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-b     | [10.***.0.0/24] |
| e9bnlm18l70a******** | default-ru-central1-a     | enpe3m3fa00u******** |                | ru-central1-a     | [10.***.0.0/24] |
+----------------------+---------------------------+----------------------+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+

Create a VM:

yc compute instance create \
  --folder-id <folder_ID> \
  --name <VM_name> \
  --zone <availability_zone> \
  --network-interface subnet-name=<subnet_name>,nat-ip-version=ipv4,security-group-ids=<security_group_ID> \
  --create-boot-disk image-id=<image_ID>,size=<boot_disk_size> \
  --cores 2 \
  --core-fraction 100 \
  --memory 4 \
  --service-account-name <service_account_name> \
  --ssh-key <path_to_public_SSH_key>

Where:

--folder-id: Folder ID.
--name: Name of the new VM.

Note

The VM name is used to generate an internal FQDN, which is set only once, when you create the VM. If the internal FQDN is important to you, make sure to choose an appropriate name for your VM.
--zone: Availability zone matching the selected subnet.
subnet-name: Name of the selected subnet.
security-group-ids: ID of the security group configured to work with Cloud Backup.
image-id: OS image ID. See the list of supported Linux-based operating systems for details.
size: Boot disk size.
--cores: Number of vCPUs in the VM.
--core-fraction: Guaranteed vCPU share in %.
--memory: VM RAM size.
--service-account-name: Name of the service account with the backup.user role or higher.
--ssh-key: Path to the file with the public SSH key. The VM will automatically create a user named yc-user for this key.

In this example, we are creating a VM running Ubuntu 20.04:

yc compute instance create \
  --folder-id wasdcjs6be29******** \
  --name my-vm \
  --zone ru-central1-b \
  --network-interface subnet-name=my-vpc-ru-central1-b,nat-ip-version=ipv4,security-group-ids=abcd3570sbqg******** \
  --create-boot-disk image-id=fd8ecgtorub9********,size=25 \
  --cores 2 \
  --core-fraction 100 \
  --memory 4 \
  --service-account-name backup-user \
  --ssh-key my-key.pub

Result:

done (46s)
id: abcdho6nspdk********
folder_id: wasdcjs6be29********
created_at: "2023-10-09T14:57:06Z"
name: my-vm
...
      one_to_one_nat:
        address: 158.***.**.***
...
placement_policy: {}

Connect to the VM over SSH. Establish a connection as yc-user and use the VM's public IP address from the create VM command output under one_to_one_nat.

Install the Cloud Backup agent:

Ubuntu

sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install -y jq && \
curl https://storage.yandexcloud.net/backup-distributions/agent_installer.sh | sudo bash

Result:

...
Agent registered with id D9CA44FC-716A-4B3B-A702-C6**********

CentOS

sudo yum install epel-release -y && \
sudo yum update -y && \
sudo yum install jq -y && \
curl https://storage.yandexcloud.net/backup-distributions/agent_installer.sh | sudo bash

Result:

...
Agent registered with id D9CA44FC-716A-4B3B-A702-C6**********

Note

If the Cloud Backup agent fails to install within 10 minutes, contact support for troubleshooting.

Once you install the Cloud Backup agent, the VM will be added to Cloud Backup in the Virtual machines tab and you will be able to associate it with a backup policy. If you selected a backup policy when creating the VM, then the VM is already associated with the policy and no further action is required.

Creating a Linux VM with a connection to Cloud Backup

Getting started

Creating a VM

See also

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Creating a Linux VM with a connection to Cloud Backup

Getting startedGetting started

Creating a VMCreating a VM

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Getting started

Creating a VM

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