This document introduces the ECS full machine backup feature overview, backup methods, working principles, operation processes, and costs.

Feature overview

ECS full machine backup is an agentless backup service for cloud servers (ECS instances) provided by Volcengine. This service is based on the EBS cloud disk snapshot service and allows you to create crash-consistent backups for all or some cloud disks of an ECS instance, used for backing up or restoring the entire ECS instance or a single EBS cloud disk.

Working principle

The cloud backup ECS full machine backup service relies on the EBS cloud disk snapshot service. It automates orchestration of snapshot lifecycle management and snapshot rollback to achieve ECS full machine backup and recovery.

ECS full machine backup

Specify the cloud disks to back up. After enabling backup, CBR creates a snapshot consistency group for the selected cloud disks. This group serves as an ECS full machine backup recovery point, visible in the console, providing backup data recovery functions.

ECS full machine recovery

When restoring data through a recovery point in the console, CBR uses the cloud disk snapshot rollback function to roll back the corresponding snapshot to the original cloud disk.

Backup methods

Cloud Backup offers automatic and manual backup methods. The detailed descriptions and differences between these two backup methods are as follows:

Comparison items	Automatic backup	Manual backup
Trigger method	Automatically triggered based on the backup rules set in the backup policy.	Manual trigger.
Backup policy & backup schedule	Required.	Not required.
Recovery point name	The initial name is auto-generated by the system and can be modified later. Name prefix: autobackup_.	Support customization. Name prefix: manualbackup_.
Backup type	Incremental backup, full backup	Incremental backup
Application scenarios	Suitable for scenarios requiring regular and frequent data protection, such as daily backups of ECS instances, enabling quick data recovery in case of unexpected failures causing data loss.	This applies to scenarios triggered by specific events irregularly, allowing fast recovery of the ECS instance or cloud disk to the state before the change after an operation fails.

Operation process

The operation process for manual and automatic full ECS backups using the Cloud Backup console is shown below.

Manual backup

Automatic backup

Activate cloud backup service.

Cloud backup is currently in public beta. You can activate it for free on the Cloud Backup page.

The cloud backup service itself does not charge any fees. Using cloud backup depends on other cloud service products, which may incur charges. The cost of ECS full machine backup is charged by the snapshot service. For snapshot service billing details, see Snapshot Billing.

Create an ECS full machine backup source.

For detailed steps, see Create ECS full machine backup source.

Create an ECS full machine backup source on the Cloud Backup console. The backup source is the object to be backed up, namely the ECS instance.

Manual backup.

For detailed steps, see Operating steps.

Perform a manual backup of the backup source to create a manual backup task. The system will automatically generate the corresponding restore point.

Restore backup data.

For detailed operations, see Operating steps.

When an ECS instance or cloud disk encounters an issue, restore the backup data to the original ECS instance or cloud disk using the corresponding recovery point based on the backup time.

Notes

The ECS full backup service relies on the EBS snapshot service. Before performing a full ECS backup, activate the snapshot service on the ECS side by logging into the Cloud Server Console, then navigate to Storage > Snapshots to enable or view snapshots.

Backing up performance SSDs is not supported. Performance SSDs belong to a previous generation cloud product and have been gradually discontinued.

A single backup source supports creating up to 10 recovery points (including manual and automatic backup points). When the number of recovery points exceeds 10, backup operations will be blocked. In this case, delete some recovery points first. Refer to Deleting Recovery Points for detailed steps.

A single backup source can have only 1 ongoing task at the same time (including backup and restore tasks). New tasks will enter a queue automatically, with a maximum queue length of 2 tasks. Tasks exceeding this limit will fail to create.

Usage limits

Restrictions	Limitations
Backup source	A single backup source can associate with up to one backup plan. A single backup source allows one concurrent backup or restore task. The number of queued backup or restore tasks allowed per backup source: 2.
Backup plan	The maximum number of backup plans a single account can add within one region is 300. The maximum number of backup sources associated with a single backup plan is 300.
Backup policy	The maximum number of backup policies that a single account can add within a single region: 300.
Recovery point	The maximum number of recovery points per single backup source: 10

Cost

The cost of ECS full machine backup is charged by the snapshot service. For detailed billing methods of the snapshot service, see Snapshot Billing.

Cloud Backup and Recovery