Elastic Compute Service:Compare File Backup and snapshots

Comparison dimension

File Backup Essential Edition

Snapshots

Backup and recovery granularity

File-level backup and recovery: Recover a single file or folder to the original path or another ECS instance.

For disks that do not support snapshots, such as local disks, and elastic ephemeral disks, use File Backup Essential Edition for data protection.

Disk-level backup and recovery: Recover an entire disk by rolling back the original disk or creating a new disk.

Billing method

Billing by block storage capacity: Each Alibaba Cloud account and its RAM users share a 100 GiB free quota across all regions. Billing is based on the total capacity of block storage (cloud disks, local disks, and ephemeral disks) attached to ECS instances. Charges start after the first successful backup and are independent of the actual amount of data backed up, making costs predictable. See Benefits of File Backup Essential Edition.

Billing by snapshot capacity: Billing is based on the snapshot size, which depends on the amount of data stored and the amount of data that has changed. Snapshots use incremental backup: the first snapshot is a full snapshot, and subsequent snapshots capture only changed data blocks. See Snapshot billing.

Backup policy

By default, backups run daily and are retained for 30 days. The latest backup is always retained even after its retention period expires. You can manually disable this default retention.

• Set an automatic snapshot policy for periodic backups with a retention period of 1 to 65,536 days. You can also extend the retention period after the snapshot is created.

• A disk can have multiple automatic snapshot policies, allowing different backup frequencies and retention periods for different workloads.

Common scenarios

• Website or application data protection: Back up and recover individual files such as code, configuration files, and user-uploaded content.

• Simplified recovery: Recover files directly in the console, reducing operational errors and labor costs.

• Ransomware prevention: Use backup lock to protect backup data from unauthorized modification and deletion.

• Rapid deployment: Create a snapshot, build a custom image from it, and deploy multiple ECS instances with identical environments.

• Data protection before important operations: Manually create a snapshot before operations such as changing the operating system or scaling out a disk.

• Long-term data backup: Use snapshots for periodic full-disk backups or long-term data retention when file-level recovery is not needed.