Help Center/ Cloud Backup and Recovery/ Drawer/ Creating Vaults/ Backup Policies
Updated on 2026-03-24 GMT+08:00
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Backup Policies

Description

You can apply an automatic backup policy to regularly save your data. Then if anything happens, you can restore data from the latest backup.

If you need to automatically back up data, you can apply a backup policy to a vault. The policy defines when backups happen, how often they occur, and how long the data is retained. A backup policy is only applied after it is associated with a vault and is enabled.

Automatic backup

  • If you select Configure, you can select an existing backup policy or create a new one. This backup policy will be applied to the vault. Servers in this vault will be automatically backed up based on this policy. You can select an existing backup policy or create a new one.
  • If you select Skip, servers in this vault will not be automatically backed up until you apply a backup policy to the vault. For details about how to apply a backup policy, see Policy Management.

If you have not created any policies, the system provides a default policy called "defaultPolicy". If the backup time, interval, and retention rules of this default policy do not meet your requirements, you can click Create Policy to create one and apply it to your vault.

If you back up data during 22:00 p.m and 08:00 a.m, there may be delays. To minimize delays, consider scheduling backups during off-peak hours.

Automatic association

  • If you select Configure, in the next backup period, CBR will automatically scan for unprotected servers, associate them with the vault, and perform backups.
  • If you select Skip, you can still enable automatic association later. For details, see Associating Resources with a Vault.

After you enable automatic association, CBR scans for unbacked resources, associates them with the vault, and regularly backs up the resources based on the backup policy that is applied to the vault.

If the vault is full, resources will be associated with the next vault available to CBR.

If you do not require automatic association anymore, you can choose More > Disable Automatic Association in the Operation column of the vault.

FAQ

How Do I Create a Backup Policy for a Vault?

You can click Create Policy to create one. For details about the parameters, see Table 1.

Table 1 Backup policy parameters

Parameter

Description

Example Value

Type

Type of the policy. In this section, we select Backup.

Backup policy

Policy Name

Backup policy name. You can enter a custom name or use the default name policy_xxxx.

The name must contain 1 to 64 characters including digits, letters, underscores (_), or hyphens (-).

backup_policy

Status

Whether to enable the backup policy. Backup policies are enabled by default.

CBR backs up servers and EVS disks to a vault and deletes expired backups only after a backup policy is enabled for the vault.

Enabled

Backup Frequency

Frequency for executing a backup task. By default, backup tasks are executed automatically every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

  • Weekly

    You can select one or more days of the week for the backup task to run.

  • Day-based

    You can specify the interval between backups, from 1 to 30 days.

If you select Day-based, the first backup should be performed on the day the policy was created. If the scheduled execution time has already passed on the day you create the backup policy, the first backup will run in the next cycle.

You are advised to perform backups during off-peak hours or when there are no services running.

Every day

Execution Time

Execution times of the backup policy in a day. The default backup time is 22:00.

Backups can only be scheduled on the hour. You can select multiple hours.

You are advised to perform backups during off-peak hours or when there are no services running.

Peak backup hours are from 00:00 to 06:00. During this period, scheduling delays may occur. For optimal performance, schedule backups outside of peak hours.

NOTICE:
  • There may be a time difference between the scheduled backup time and the actual backup time.
  • If you have a large amount of data to back up, you are advised to set a less frequent backup schedule. If a backup task takes longer than the backup interval, the system will skip the next backup execution time.

    For example, suppose a disk is scheduled to be backed up at 00:00, 01:00, and 02:00. A backup task starts at 00:00. Because a large amount of incremental data needs to be backed up or a heap of backup tasks are executed at the same time, this backup task takes 90 minutes to complete at 01:30. The scheduled backup at 01:00 will be skipped. There will be only two backups generated, one at 00:00, and the other at 02:00.

  • The backup time refers to the client's local time, not the time zone of the region.

00:00 and 02:00

Full Backup

Whether to perform periodic full backups. By default, full backup is disabled.

  • Enable

    Enabling full backup improves your data reliability, but full backups will take more storage space.

    Configure a full backup frequency. The value ranges from 0 to 100. A value of 0 means that a full backup will be performed in every backup task.

  • Disable

    CBR will perform incremental backups after the first backup.

    NOTICE:
    • A full backup usually takes a long period of time. If a full backup of a resource is in progress, other policy-based or manual backups of this resource will not be performed. You are advised to back up data during off-peak hours.
    • When backups are retained by quantity, full backups can be performed only when the configured full backups is less than the number of retained backups.
    • If full backup is not enabled, to ensure data security, a full backup is performed after 365 incremental backups, by default.

7

Backup Frequency

Frequency for executing a backup task.

  • Weekly

    You can select one or more days of the week for the backup task to run.

  • Day-based

    You can specify the interval between backups, from 1 to 30 days.

Every day

If you select Day-based, the first backup should be performed on the day the policy was created. If the scheduled execution time has already passed on the day you create the backup policy, the first backup will run in the next cycle.

You are advised to perform backups during off-peak hours or when there are no services running.

Backup Retention Rule

The rule that specifies how backups will be retained. By default, backups are retained for one month.

  • Time period

    You can choose to retain backups for one month, three months, six months, one year, or for any desired number of days (2 to 99,999).

  • Backup quantity

    You can set the number of backups to retain for each cloud server. The value ranges from 2 to 99,999.

  • Advanced Options

    You can also set long-term retention rules. Long-term retention rules and quantity-based retention rules will be both applied.

    • Day-Based: 0–100
    • Weekly: 0–100
    • Monthly: 0–100
    • Yearly: 0–100

    For example, if you select Day-Based, the system retains the most recent backup each day. If a disk is backed up multiple times in a day, only the most recent backup of that day is retained. If you set Day-Based to 5, the most recent backup of each of the last five days will be retained. A total of five backups will be retained. If there are more than five backups, the earliest backup will be deleted automatically. When multiple backup schedules (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) are enabled, the system retains the combined union of all backups. For example, if Day-Based is set to 5 and Weekly to 1, five backups will be retained. The long-term retention rule and the quantity-based retention rule will both apply.

  • Permanent
    NOTE:
    • The system automatically deletes the earliest and any expired backups every other day to avoid exceeding the maximum number of backups to retain or retaining any backup longer than the maximum retention period.
    • Retained backups may not be deleted immediately after the expiration time specified in the backup policy. There may be a delay. Generally, they are deleted in batches from 8:00 to 20:00 after the expiration time. For example, if a backup expired at 20:00 on November 23, 2024, it was deleted between 08:00 and 20:00 on November 24, 2024. This helps ensure backups are deleted during off-peak hours.
    • Retention rules are only applied to backups generated automatically based on a policy. They are not applied to backups generated manually. Manual backups must be deleted manually.
    • If a backup is used to create an image, the backup will not be deleted by a retention rule. Instead, it will be forcibly retained. After the image created from a backup is deleted, the backup itself will be managed according to the original retention policy. If it exceeds the retention duration or quantity limits defined in that policy, it will be automatically deleted.
    • A maximum of 10 backups can be retained for failed periodic backup tasks. They are retained for one month and can be deleted manually.
    • If a backup already exists while the next backup task is running, deletion of the existing backup will be blocked. You must wait until the task finishes before deleting the backup.

6 months

Select Backup quantity and set to keep 3 backups. Under Advanced Options, select Configure now and set to keep the most recent backup from each of the last two weeks. If today is the 30th of a month, the execution of this policy is shown in Figure 1.

  • Dates with a time indicate the days when backups were generated.
  • Dates with the time in gray indicate that the backups have been deleted.
  • Dates with the time in green indicate that the backups are being retained.

If the weekly retention rule in advanced options is not configured, only the backups generated on the 25th, 26th, and 29th will be retained.
Figure 1 The execution of the retention rule

If There Are Multiple Resources in a Vault, How Their Data Is Retained?

If you have associated multiple resources with a vault and applied a backup policy to the vault, the retention rule of the backup policy will take effect on each resource associated.

For example, if you associate two servers with a vault and configure in the backup policy to keep the latest five backups. After you apply the policy to the vault, CBR will keep the latest five backups of each server, that is, 10 backups in total. If the retention rule is to keep backups from the last one month, CBR will keep the backups generated in the last one month for each server.

How Can I Retain My Backups Permanently?

When setting a policy, set the backup retention rule to Retained permanently or enter 99999 days. Backups generated based on this policy will not be automatically deleted. Backups can be permanently retained as long as your credit card has sufficient credit or your account has sufficient balance.

Parent Topic: Creating Vaults