Cloud Backup is integrated with the Alibaba Cloud snapshot service to provide agentless backup for Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances and disks. Cloud Backup can create crash-consistent snapshots for all disks, including system disks and data disks. You can use the snapshots to back up or restore an entire disk.
Prerequisites
All disks attached to your ECS instances are enhanced SSDs (ESSDs). This ensures crash consistency of the ECS instances. If some disks are not ESSDs, Cloud Backup enables the crash consistency feature only for specific disks.
Background information
The ECS instance protection feature allows you to protect ECS instances or specified disks by using a periodic disk backup policy. This ensures low-cost protection.
You are charged for the usage of ECS snapshots. You are charged a small amount of fees when you use Cloud Backup to back up ECS instances. For more information, see Cloud Backup Pricing.
ECS instance backup is a backup orchestration service that is provided by Cloud Backup based on the ECS snapshot capability. The fees for the storage usage of ECS snapshots that are used by this feature are included into the snapshot service bill. If you turn on Replication to Other Region, the fees for the storage usage of ECS snapshots that are replicated to the destination region and the fees for cross-region traffic are also included into the snapshot service bill. For more information, see Snapshots.
Precautions
You cannot use the ECS instance backup feature to back up or restore local disks. For more information, see Local disks.
If you use local disks to store data, your data may be lost. We recommend that you use the ECS file backup feature to protect your files in local disks and use the database backup feature to protect your databases that are deployed in local disks. For more information, see Back up files from an ECS instance and Database backup.
You cannot use the ECS instance backup feature to replicate encrypted disks across regions. We recommend that you use the ECS instance backup feature to protect the files in your encrypted disks. For more information, see Back up files from an ECS instance.
If backup policies are supported in the region where you edit a backup plan, Cloud Backup automatically converts your backup plan to a backup policy. The parameter settings of your backup plan remain unchanged.
Procedure
You can create backup policies only in some regions. To view the regions that support backup policies, click Policy Center in the left-side navigation pane of the console.
Log on to the Cloud Backup console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select a region.
In the upper-right corner of the page, click Add ECS Backup.
In the Add ECS Backup panel, configure the backup objects and backup settings.
Specify the backup objects and click Next.
ImportantYou must select the ECS instances and disks that you want to back up. Protect All Disks is turned on by default. If you want to protect all disks of an ECS instance, turn on Protect All Disks. In this case, the disks that are later attached to the ECS instance are also protected. If you want to protect only specific disks, turn off Protect All Disks.
You can associate up to 99 ECS instances with a backup policy.
Cloud Backup automatically checks whether the selected ECS instances support snapshot-consistent groups. Cloud Backup automatically creates a snapshot-consistent group for the ECS instances that support snapshot-consistent groups. If an ECS instance does not support snapshot-consistent groups, Cloud Backup ensures only the crash consistency of disks. For more information, see Create a snapshot-consistent group.
Configure the backup settings and click OK.
Configure the backup mode.
You can select Manual Backup or Auto Backup. The following list describes the parameters.
If you select a single ECS instance, you can turn on Application Consistent Backup to enable the application-consistent backup feature.
For more information, see Enable the application-consistent backup feature.
Optional: Turn on Replication to Other Region to enable the cross-region replication feature, and then configure the parameters. The following table describes the parameters.
Parameter
Description
Destination Region
If you enable the cross-region replication feature, the backup files that are created by the backup plan are automatically replicated to the specified destination region.
If an ECS instance is infected with viruses or data is lost due to accidental deletion, you can use the backup files replicated to the destination region to create another instance to restore data.
Retention Period
The retention period of the backup data in the destination region. Unit: days, weeks, months, or years.
After you create the backup policy, Cloud Backup runs the first backup job at the start time that you specified and runs the subsequent backup jobs based on the interval that you specified.
What to do next
The following table describes the tabs that are provided by the ECS instance backup feature. You can efficiently manage backup jobs on these tabs.
Tab | Description | Operation |
Backed-up ECS Instances | Displays the ECS instances that are protected by Cloud Backup. |
|
Job List | Displays the status of each executed job. | You can cancel the jobs that are being executed. |