Elastic Compute Service:Choose the right ECS data protection solution: A comparison of File Backup and snapshots

Comparison dimension

File Backup Essential Edition

Snapshots

Backup and recovery granularity

File-level backup and recovery: You can directly recover 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, you can use File Backup Essential Edition for data protection.

Disk-level backup and recovery: You can recover data for 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 clear and predictable. For more information, 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 an incremental backup mechanism. The first snapshot is a full snapshot, and subsequent snapshots back up only the data blocks that have changed since the previous snapshot. For more information, see Snapshots.

Backup policy

By default, backups run once per day and are retained for 30 days. The latest backup version is always retained and is not deleted when its retention period expires. You can manually disable this default retention.

• You can set an automatic snapshot policy for periodic backups. You can specify a custom retention period from 1 to 65,536 days. You can also manually extend the retention period after the snapshot is created.

• A disk can be attached to multiple automatic snapshot policies. This lets you customize backup frequencies and retention policies for different applications or business needs.

Common scenarios

• Website or application data protection: Provides fine-grained backup and recovery of file data, such as code, configuration files, and user-uploaded content.

• Simplified recovery: You can perform recovery operations directly in the web console. This reduces the risk of operational errors and lowers labor costs.

• Ransomware prevention: You can use the backup lock feature to protect backup data from unauthorized modification and deletion.

• Rapid deployment: To quickly deploy multiple ECS instances with identical environments, you can create a snapshot and use it to build a custom image. This is the most efficient method.

• Data protection before important operations: Before performing important operations such as changing the operating system or scaling out a disk, you can manually create a snapshot to immediately back up data.

• Long-term data backup: You can use snapshots for periodic backups of an entire disk or for long-term data retention when you do not need file-level recovery.