Backups in Compute Cloud
Data contained in images, snapshots, and disks that are not attached to VMs is stored securely and replicated within the Yandex Cloud infrastructure.
To back up the data from disks attached to VMs, you need to create disk snapshots on a regular basis. You can do this both manually and automatically, on schedule.
To restore a VM from a disk snapshot, you can:
- Create a new disk from a snapshot, and then attach the created disk to a VM.
- Create a new VM from a set of snapshots. In the operation parameters, you can specify both boot and regular disk snapshots.
You cannot recover a boot disk of an existing VM from a snapshot or image. However, you can create a new VM to recover a boot disk from a snapshot. To recover the boot disk of an existing VM, use Yandex Cloud Backup.
Comparison with backups in Cloud Backup
In Cloud Backup, you can create full and incremental backups of virtual machines along with boot disks and restore VMs from these backups. 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.
Note
If you use a policy with the fastBackupEnabled option and ran an antivirus scan before creating an incremental backup, the backup time may increase significantly. For more information, see Interaction with an antivirus.
With Cloud Backup, you can restore individual files and directories from a backup.
To enable backups on a VM, connect the VM to Cloud Backup and link it to a backup policy. The provider must support the VM operating system.
| Disk snapshots in Compute Cloud | Cloud Backup | |
|---|---|---|
| Granularity | Disk | VMs with all disks Individual files and folders VM applications (coming soon). |
| Disk types | All types except local disks on dedicated hosts. The snapshot creation time is not fixed for non-replicated disks and SSD-IO. |
All disk types |
| LVM | Not supported | Supported |
| Recovery | Full recovery to a new VM only. | To a new or existing VM. Partial recovery of individual files. |
| Consistency | Atomic snapshot of each disk. | Atomic snapshot of the entire VM, individual folders, or files. |
| Backup integrity checks | Not supported | Supported |
| Agent installation | Not required | Required, installed automatically when connecting a VM to the service. |
| Optimization | Full backups only. Data compression is not supported. |
Full or incremental backups. Multiple data compression levels with an option to opt out. |
| Pricing | Per GB of stored backups. | Per GB of stored backups and VM connection fee. |
| Required VM status | You can create a snapshot on both stopped or running VMs. | You can only create a snapshot on a running VM with the Cloud Backup agent installed. |