Cloud Backup provides a powerful orchestration service to back up your Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances. Based on the underlying disk snapshot capability, it lets you create comprehensive backup and recovery plans. This guide provides an overview of the entire process, from initial activation to restoring your instances.
ECS instance backup relies on the snapshot service. The first time you create a backup job, you will be prompted to activate the snapshot service.
Activating Cloud Backup is free. However, the ECS instance backup service incurs two distinct charges: software usage fees from Cloud Backup for the orchestration service, and storage fees from the snapshot service for the underlying data storage. For more information, see Billing methods and billable items.
In this step, you create a backup plan for your ECS instances, configuring key settings like the backup mode and retention period. The first job in any plan is always a full backup, while all subsequent jobs are incremental, saving both time and storage space.
Restore or clone an ECS instance or disk
If you encounter a data loss event or system failure, use your backups to recover your instances and data. Cloud Backup provides flexible options, allowing you to restore or clone an entire ECS instance or individual disks to a specific point in time.
ImportantCloning an ECS instance or disk creates new resources and incurs charges based on standard ECS billing methods. For more information, see Billable items and billing methods of ECS.
Learn more:
For a detailed overview of features and billing, see Overview of the ECS instance backup feature.
To understand the differences between this service and using snapshots directly, see What are the differences between ECS instance backup and the snapshot service?