This topic provides an overview of the NAS backup feature of Cloud Backup, including the benefits, working principles, procedure, and billing of the feature.
Introduction
NAS backup is a high-efficiency and low-cost data protection solution provided by Cloud Backup for General-purpose NAS file systems. Cloud Backup allows you to back up Capacity NAS file systems and Performance NAS file systems. Cloud Backup supports Network File System (NFS), Common Internet File System (CIFS), and Server Message Block (SMB). Cloud Backup provides advanced data protection capabilities such as agentless backup and deduplication and compression. You do not need to prepare computing resources for data backup. You can efficiently back up a General-purpose NAS file system to a backup vault with simple configuration and low cost. If a file is accidentally deleted from your NAS file system or ransomware attacks occur, you can restore data by using Cloud Backup. This ensures data security.
This feature has some limits. For more information, see Limits.
Benefits
Backup capability native to Alibaba Cloud
You can protect data in General-purpose NAS file systems without the need to prepare computing resources or install backup components.
Fine-grained data protection
To achieve fine-grained data protection, you can back up all files in a file system or files that match specified conditions.
Flexible data versioning
You can configure scheduled backup plans by day, week, month, and year, and specify the retention period of the backup data. This allows you to flexibly manage the versions of backup data.
Easy-to-use file recovery
You can restore one or more files to a specified point in time in the Cloud Backup console. You do not need to run scripts or programs to check the historical versions of the files.
Deduplication and compression
When Cloud Backup backs up data from a source NAS file system, Cloud Backup compresses and deduplicates the data. This minimizes the storage space occupied by the backup data.
Immutable backup against accidental or malicious deletion
Cloud Backup provides the immutable backup feature based on backup vaults. Backup data cannot be deleted by any account or method before the configured retention period expires.
How it works
Cloud Backup provides agentless backup services. You do not need to prepare the computing resources required for data backup. You only need to add General-purpose NAS file systems to the protection list of Cloud Backup. Cloud Backup automatically backs up the specified file systems.
When a backup plan is running, Cloud Backup scans the specified NAS folders to identify the files to be backed up, compresses and deduplicates the source data, and then uploads incremental data to the backup vault.
Cloud Backup uses a permanent incremental backup mechanism. Except for the first full backup job, each subsequent backup job uploads only the data that has changed compared with the previous backup job. A complete full backup is synthesized at the backend to minimize storage consumption.
Procedure
The following procedure shows how to back up a NAS file system in the Cloud Backup console.
You are not charged for activating Cloud Backup. If you create a backup vault, you are charged for the storage usage of the backup vault. For more information, see Billing methods and billable items.
When you create a backup plan, configure the backup vault, encryption type, backup cycle, and retention period. Cloud Backup starts the backup plan and continuously backs up files from the specified NAS file system.
ImportantIf the selected region supports backup policies, you can set a backup plan only by associating it with a backup policy. Cloud Backup periodically backs up the NAS file system based on the backup policy.
To view the regions that support backup policies, click Policy Center in the left-side navigation pane of the Cloud Backup console. For more information about how to create a backup policy, see Create a backup policy.
If an exception occurs in a NAS file system, you can create a restore job based on the data that has been backed up.
Billing
You are charged for the backup of NAS files based on the following billable items:
Storage usage: Cloud Backup provides two types of backup storage: locally redundant storage (LRS) and zone-redundant storage (ZRS). You are charged based on the storage usage of the backup vaults. You can view the storage usage of backup vaults on the Overview page in the
Cloud Backup console. For more information, see Pricing.
In addition, Cloud Backup charges the following fees based on specific backup configurations or operations:
Geo-redundancy fees: If you create a remote mirror vault to copy data from a backup vault in an Alibaba Cloud region to another region for geo-redundancy, you are charged for the storage capacity of the mirror vault and the cross-region replication traffic. The size of the mirror vault is the same as that of the source backup vault, and the pricing is the same.
Traffic fees are calculated based on the data volume.
What to do next
Learn about how to back up NAS file systems. For more information, see Back up an Apsara File Storage NAS file system.
Learn about the best practices of Cloud Backup. For more information, see Best Practices.