General information about cloud server network volume backups
You can create backups of network drives for cloud servers in two ways:
- configure automated scheduled backups. Create a backup plan, specify the backup schedule, and add network drives to the plan. You can schedule the creation of full or incremental backups;
- create a backup manually to capture the system state. You do not need to configure a plan to create a backup manually. Manually, you can only create a full backup.
Records of operations with network drive backups are saved in audit logs.
You can view alternative ways to create backups of cloud servers in the Backup methods table.
Full backup
A full backup is a complete copy of a drive with all data.
Full backups can be created manually or automatically on a schedule by configuring a backup plan.
In the backup plan, you can configure a schedule for creating full backups by days of the week or using a cron expression. The plan settings also specify how many recent backups to keep.
Incremental backup
An incremental backup is a copy of the changes between the current state of a drive and the previous backup created under the plan. Such a backup is created faster than a full one and takes up less space because it stores only changes on the drive.
Incremental backups can only be created automatically on a schedule.
Incremental backups are created daily at the time specified in the backup plan settings. A full backup is created first, and then it is created once a week. Incremental backups are created on the remaining days.
Backup availability in locations
Tashkent
Almaty
Nairobi
Saint Petersburg
Moscow
Novosibirsk
Creating backups
We guarantee crash-consistent backups. At the time of creation, data on the disk is written to the backup. "Dirty data" generated when overwriting or deleting files on the disk can also be written to the backup. Data in cloud server memory is not written to the backup. Due to "dirty data":
- the size of a full backup may exceed the actual size of data and files on the disk;
- the size of an incremental backup may exceed the difference between the current data size and the size of the previous backup.
Creating a backup does not affect cloud server performance — all operations run on Servercore compute resources. When creating a full backup, a disk snapshot is taken, with no increase in load on the cloud server. When creating an incremental backup, changes between the current disk state and the previous backup are calculated on the fly, and the difference between the states is transferred to the backup storage.
Backup storage
By default, full and incremental backups are stored in three copies on a dedicated group of hardware:
- in single-zone pools, an isolated data storage cluster is deployed in each pool segment. It stores backups and drives, which increases the speed of creating backups and restoring from them;
- in the multi-zone pool ru-6, a data storage cluster shared across all pool segments is used. This allows you to restore a drive from a backup in any pool segment and with any drive type.
Such storage ensures data safety even in case of failures on servers hosting the disks.
You cannot download a backup, but you can restore a drive from it: a new drive of the same type and size as the original one will be created.
The ru-3 and ru-7 pools are linked by a multi-region backup system. When creating a backup manually for a network drive in one of these pools, you can select the other pool to store this backup. This system allows you to create disaster-resistant copies of data.
Backups created automatically on a schedule are stored in chains of seven — one full and six subsequent incremental ones. The plan specifies how many full backups to keep (minimum is two). For example, if the plan settings specify keeping three full backups, the three most recent backup chains will be kept.
Backup storage limits
If backups are created automatically on a schedule, the total number of backups in a single project is unlimited. At the same time, within a single plan there is a limit on creation: 90 backups for plans with full backups, and 14 full backups and 78 incremental backups for plans with incremental backups.
You can store up to 1,000 manually created backups in a single project.
Automatic backup deletion
Only for backups created automatically on a schedule.
In the plan settings, when choosing to keep recent backups, you specify how many recent full backups or chains of incremental backups to keep. When a new full backup is created for a disk, the service checks the total number of full backups of the disk within a single plan. If this number exceeds the maximum number specified in the plan, the oldest full backups are deleted.
Incremental backups are stored in chains of seven backups — one full and six subsequent incremental ones. A week after creating the first full backup, the earliest incremental backup is merged with the earliest full backup. If you specified keeping two full backups in the plan settings, the two most recent chains will be kept; if three full backups, the three most recent chains, and so on.
All backups will be preserved if you delete a disk, cloud server, or backup plan.
Backups can be deleted manually.
Cost
Backup storage is billed under the cloud platform payment model.
The cost of backup storage depends on the backup size and the pool segment where it is stored. Storage is billed only for backups with statuses AVAILABLE or RESTORING; backups in other statuses are not charged.
Every GB of backup storage is charged. If the backup size is less than 1 GB, the billable volume is rounded up to 1 GB.
You can check the cost per 1 GB of backup storage on servercore.com.
You can view the actual backup size in the Control Panel: in the top menu, click Products and select Cloud Servers → Backups section → Backups tab. You can also view the total billable backup volume in the Control Panel: in the top menu, click Products → Cloud Servers → Platform consumption section → Current cost tab.