Getting started with Yandex Cloud Backup on a new VM

Written by

Yandex Cloud

Improved by

Danila N.

Updated at July 29, 2026

View in Markdown

Set up your infrastructure
Create a VM
How to delete the resources you created
What's next

Before you get started with Cloud Backup, make sure you have a linked billing account and its status is ACTIVE or TRIAL_ACTIVE.

In this scenario, you will create a Linux VM and connect it to Cloud Backup. If you do not need to create a new VM and want to use an existing VM for connecting to Cloud Backup, refer to How to get started with Yandex Cloud Backup on an existing VM.

The cost of VM backup resources includes:

Fee for VM computing resources and disks (see Yandex Compute Cloud pricing).
Fee for backed up VMs and backup retention (see Yandex Cloud Backup pricing).

To get started with Cloud Backup:

If you no longer need the resources you created, delete them.

Set up your infrastructure

If you do not have a cloud network yet, create one.
If your cloud network has no subnets, create one:

In a cloud network, create a security group with the following rules for outgoing traffic:

Port range	Protocol	Destination name	IPv4 CIDR
`80`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`213.180.193.0/24`
`80`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`213.180.204.0/24`
`443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`84.47.172.0/24`
`443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`84.201.181.0/24`
`443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`178.176.128.0/24`
`443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`213.180.193.0/24`
`443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`213.180.204.0/24`
`7770-7800`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`84.47.172.0/24`
`8443`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`84.47.172.0/24`
`44445`	`TCP`	`Address range`	`51.250.1.0/24`

Create a VM

Management console

In the management console, select the folder where you want to create a VM connected to Cloud Backup.
Navigate to Compute Cloud.
In the left-hand panel, select Virtual machines.
Click Create virtual machine.
Under Boot disk image, select an image with a supported OS, e.g., Ubuntu 20.04.
Under Location, select an availability zone where your VM will reside.
Under Disks and file storages and Computing resources, set the preferred VM parameters.

The minimum resource specification required to install and correctly run the Cloud Backup agent is as follows:
- Free disk space:
  - For Linux-based VMs: 2 GB.
  - For Windows-based VMs: 1.2 GB.
- RAM: For backups, 1 GB of RAM is required per 1 TB of backup. The RAM requirement depends on the amount and type of data processed by the Cloud Backup agent.
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.

To speed up data backup and recovery, the Cloud Backup agent tends to consume significant amounts of RAM of the resource it is backing up. The agent can even use up all the available RAM, which in some cases may disrupt the resource's other services and make it impossible to complete the backup or recovery process.

To prevent such issues, limit the amount of data the agent caches in RAM.

Note

Limiting the Cloud Backup agent's use of RAM may slow down the backup and recovery operations.
Under Network settings:
1. In the Subnet field, select the subnet you prepared earlier.
2. In the Public IP address field, select Auto.
  
  Instead of assigning a public IP address to your VM, you can associate the subnet hosting this VM with a route table allowing internet access via a NAT gateway or a custom router.
3. In the Security groups field, select the security group you configured earlier.
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.
Activate a backup:
1. Enable Backup.
2. Select Cloud Backup.
3. Under Cloud Backup, click Select policy and, in the list that opens, select the backup policy that will be used by Cloud Backup to work with the VM.
  
  Optionally, click Create policy to create a new policy.
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.

For more information, see Connecting Yandex Compute Cloud VMs to Cloud Backup.
Under General information, enter a name for your VM:
- 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.
Click Create VM.

For more information on how to create a VM, see this guide.

After the VM status changes to Running, the Cloud Backup agent installation will start automatically. This may take from 5 to 10 minutes.

Once you install the agent, the Cloud Backup VM will be added to Cloud Backup in the Virtual machines tab and associated with a backup policy.

If the VM is not automatically associated with the policy, associate it manually.