If you need to retain backup data for a long period of time, you can use the automatic archiving feature to transfer recovery points from the Standard tier to the Archive tier. This feature helps you reduce data protection costs. This topic describes the automatic archiving feature of Cloud Backup, including the feature introduction, key benefits, limits, working mechanism, fees, and precautions.
Feature introduction
The automatic archiving feature is a solution provided by Cloud Backup to store backup data for a long period of time at a low cost in compliance scenarios. If you need to retain backup data for a long period of time and the backup data is infrequently accessed, you can use the automatic archiving feature to transfer recovery points from the Standard tier to the Archive tier. This feature helps you reduce data protection costs.
Key benefits
Cost-efficient storage of archived data
Backup data is transferred from the Standard tier to the Archive tier for cost-efficient and long-term storage.
For more information, see Pricing.
Fully automated data transfer from the Standard tier to the Archive tier
After you enable the automatic archiving feature for a backup policy, Cloud Backup automatically transfers backup data from the Standard tier to the Archive tier based on the retention period that you have specified. No manual operation is required.
Easy-to-use data restoration
When you use a recovery point at the Archive tier to restore data, Cloud Backup provides an experience close to that of restoring data from a recovery point at the Standard tier. You do not need to wait for a long time to restore the data.
Limits
The automatic archiving feature supports the following data sources: Elastic Compute Service (ECS) files, on-premises files, Object Storage Service (OSS) objects, Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) files, and on-premises NAS files. For more information about the regions that support the automatic archiving feature, see Features supported in each region.
Backup data must be retained at the Standard tier for at least 30 days before it can be transferred to the Archive tier. After backup data is transferred to the Archive tier, the data must be retained at the Archive tier for at least 60 days.
Working mechanism
The automatic archiving feature is seamlessly integrated with backup policies. You can transfer backup data from the Standard tier to the Archive tier without the need to deploy any services.
After you turn on Automatic Archiving for a backup policy, the Cloud Backup backend server automatically transfers data at recovery points from the Standard tier to the Archive tier based on the data transfer time specified in the backup policy. The time required for data archiving depends on the amount of backup data.
The automatic archiving feature adopts an incremental transfer mechanism. Full data is transferred to the Archive tier only for the first time. In subsequent automatic archiving, only the data that is changed compared with the previous recovery point is transferred to the Archive tier. Then, a complete recovery point is generated at the Archive tier. You are charged based on the cumulative amount of incremental data at the Archive tier.
When you use a recovery point at the Archive tier to restore data, Cloud Backup unfreezes and restores the data from the Archive tier.
Procedure
The following figure shows the procedure for backing up and automatically archiving data in the Cloud Backup console. The procedure for automatically archiving OSS backup data is used as an example.
You are not charged for activating Cloud Backup. You are charged for the storage usage of Cloud Backup. For more information, see Billing methods and billable items.
Create a backup policy. Configure the backup vault, backup content, backup cycle, and retention period. Turn on Automatic Archiving.
Create a backup plan and associate it with the backup policy
Cloud Backup starts the backup plan and continuously backs up the source data based on the backup policy.
If an exception occurs on a source file, you can create a restore job to restore the data source based on the file that has been backed up.
Fees
When you use the automatic archiving feature, the following fees are incurred:
Fees for the usage of Archive-tier storage
For data backup at the Standard tier, you are charged for the storage space occupied by the data that is deduplicated and compressed. However, for data backup at the Archive tier, you are charged based on the size of the source data that is transferred from the Standard tier to the Archive tier. When different recovery points of the same data source are transferred to the Archive tier, you are charged based on the size of the full source data that is automatically archived for the first time. In subsequent automatic archiving, Cloud Backup automatically identifies incremental data, and you are charged based on the size of the incremental data. The minimum billable size of the data stored at the Archive tier is 1 MB. For a source object or file whose size is less than 1 MB, you are charged based on 1 MB. For a source object or file whose size is greater than or equal to 1 MB, you are charged based on the actual size. You can view the size of the Archive-tier data in the backup vault on the Overview page in the Cloud Backup console.
For example, your OSS source data is 1024 2-MB objects and 2048 512-KB objects. After the backup data is automatically archived for the first time, the following formula is used to calculate the size of the Archive-tier data in the backup vault:
1024 × 2 MB + 2048 × 1 MB (512 KB is calculated as 1 MB) = 4 GBIf the 1024 2-MB objects are not changed, but the 2048 512-KB objects are changed in subsequent automatic archiving, the following formula is used to calculate the size of the incremental data added to the Archive tier:
2048 × 1 MB (512 KB is calculated as 1 MB) = 2 GBIn this case, the total data size at the Archive tier is 6 GB.
For more information, see Pricing.
Fees for data restoration from the Archive tier
If you restore data from a recovery point at the Archive tier, you are charged based on the actual size of the restored data. The minimum billable size of the data stored at the Archive tier is 1 MB. For an object or file whose size is less than 1 MB, you are charged based on 1 MB. For an object or file whose size is greater than or equal to 1 MB, you are charged based on the actual size.
For more information, see Pricing.
Precautions
The automatic archiving feature is not suitable for cross-region backup scenarios.
Archive-tier data in a backup vault does not support zone-redundant storage (ZRS).
Archive-tier data in a backup vault does not support cross-region replication. Backup data in a mirror vault does not support the automatic archiving feature.
After the automatic archiving feature is enabled, the feature is only effective for newly generated backups.
After backup data is automatically archived, the recovery points at the Archive tier support only automatic expiration and cannot be manually deleted.
After backup data is automatically archived, you can use the recovery points at the Archive tier to restore data. However, you cannot transfer the recovery points from the Archive tier to the Standard tier.
Backup data can still be automatically archived even if immutable backup is enabled for the backup vault. You cannot manually delete the recovery points at either the Standard tier or the Archive tier.
The Keep At Least One Backup Version feature is effective only for the recovery points at the Standard tier. If only one backup version exists at the Standard tier, the backup data is not transferred to the Archive tier. Recovery points at the Archive tier are not protected by the Keep At Least One Backup Version feature, and automatically expire after the retention period ends.
Data at the Archive tier and data at the Standard tier are stored independently. After a recovery point is automatically transferred from the Standard tier to the Archive tier, you are independently charged for the storage usage at the Archive tier based on the size of the source data that is automatically archived.