Cloud Parallel File Storage:Data backup

Backup vault

A backup vault stores your backup data and consists of a Standard tier and an Archive tier. After a backup is complete, the data is first stored in the Standard tier. If you enable the automatic archiving feature, the backup data is moved to the Archive tier for long-term, low-cost storage based on the specified policy.

To maximize the redundancy of your backup data, Cloud Backup uses zone-redundant storage (ZRS) backup vaults by default in regions that support them. For regions that support only locally redundant storage (LRS), Cloud Backup uses LRS backup vaults. You do not need to manually select a vault type.

ZRS backup vaults are supported in the following regions: China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Ulanqab), China (Shenzhen), China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), Singapore, Indonesia (Jakarta), and Germany (Frankfurt).

For more information about Cloud Backup vaults, see Vault types.

Benefits

• Simple configurations

  You can deploy lightweight backup clients on physical machines, virtual machines, or Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances without specific hardware. You can configure scheduled backup plans in the Cloud Backup console.

• High backup performance

  Cloud Backup allows multiple clients to back up a file system concurrently, which greatly improves the backup efficiency.

• Deduplication and compression

  The Cloud Backup client compresses and deduplicates the file data that you need to back up at the source end. If you back up on-premises files, the feature helps you minimize the bandwidth of cloud backup and the storage space occupied by backup data on the cloud.

• 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.

• Geo-redundancy

  If you need to back up data to a remote location, you can create a mirror vault for a backup vault to quickly protect critical data.

How it works

• First, you must install and activate a Cloud Backup client on each physical machine, virtual machine, or ECS instance. You must log on to the Cloud Backup console to add a CPFS file system as the data source. Then, you can use the Cloud Backup client to back up specified files in the file system.

• When a backup job is running, the Cloud Backup client scans the specified folders to identify the files to be backed up, compresses and deduplicates the source data, and then uploads incremental data to a backup vault. If multiple Cloud Backup clients are installed, you can concurrently back up data from your CPFS file system to improve backup performance.

• Cloud Backup uses an incremental-forever backup strategy. 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 on the cloud to minimize network and storage consumption.

• When you delete a backup point, only the data slices exclusive to the backup point are deleted without affecting other backup points.

  • After a full backup point is deleted, subsequent data restoration is not affected. If you delete a full backup point, only the data slices exclusive to the backup point are deleted. Data slices referenced by other backup points are not deleted.

  • If you delete a backup point, incremental data generated after the backup point can still be backed up and restored. The incremental-forever backup strategy ensures that the first backup job performs a full backup and subsequent backup jobs perform incremental backups.

• Cloud Backup allows you to back up on-premises files to Alibaba Cloud over the Internet, virtual private networks (VPNs), or Express Connect circuits. If you back up data over the Internet, you must make sure that the server on which the Cloud Backup client is installed can access the Internet. You do not need to expose the IP address of the server to the Internet.

Workflow

The workflow for backing up CPFS using the Cloud Backup console is as follows:

1. Activate Cloud Backup

   Activating the Cloud Backup service is free of charge. Cloud Backup charges for storage capacity. For more information about billing, see Billing methods and billable items.

2. Install a backup client

   The backup client is used to establish communication and management services between a backup node (a physical machine, VM, or ECS instance) and Cloud Backup.

3. Add a data source

   In the Cloud Backup console, you can add CPFS as a data source.

4. Back up data

   Create a backup plan. You can set the backup vault, source path, backup cycle, retention period, and other parameters. Cloud Backup then starts the plan and continuously backs up the file system according to the schedule.

   Important

   • After you create a backup plan, the first backup job is a full backup. Subsequent jobs are incremental backups by default.

   • If the region that you select supports backup policies, you can create a backup plan only by associating it with a backup policy. Cloud Backup will then periodically back up the file system according to that policy.

   • In the navigation pane on the left of the console, click Policy Center to view the regions that support backup policies. For more information about how to create a backup policy, see Create a backup policy.

5. Restore data

   If files in the file system are lost or damaged, you can restore all files or specific files that meet certain conditions from a historical backup. You can restore the files to the source CPFS file system or to a new CPFS file system.

Billing

When you use the CPFS backup feature, the following fees are incurred:

Storage usage fees. You are charged based on the storage usage of 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 of Cloud Backup.

Traffic fees are calculated based on the data volume.