The backup feature of the Cloud Parallel File Storage (CPFS) is an efficient and cost-effective data protection solution provided by Alibaba Cloud Cloud Backup. Cloud Backup provides advanced data protection capabilities such as concurrent scanning on multiple nodes, integration with storage APIs, and deduplication and compression. To back up data, you only need to perform a few operations in the Cloud Backup console. The backup solution offers high performance and low costs. If a file in your file system is accidentally deleted, you can restore data from a backup vault to ensure data security.
Backup vault
A backup vault is used to store your backup data. It is divided into the Standard tier and the Archive tier. After data is backed up, the backup data is first stored in the Standard tier. If you enable the automatic archiving feature, the backup data is forwarded to the Archive tier based on the specified archiving policy for long-term storage at low costs.
To maximize the redundancy of your backup data, Cloud Backup uses zone-redundant storage (ZRS)-enabled backup vaults by default in regions that support ZRS-enabled backup vaults. For regions that support only locally redundant storage (LRS)-enabled backup vaults, Cloud Backup uses LRS-enabled backup vaults. You do not need to manually select a backup vault type.
ZRS-enabled backup vaults are supported in the following regions: China (Hangzhou), China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), China (Zhangjiakou), China (Ulanqab), China (Shenzhen), China (Hong Kong), Japan (Tokyo), Singapore, Indonesia (Jakarta), and Germany (Frankfurt).
For more information about the backup vaults, see Storage vault types.
Benefits
Simple configurations
You can deploy lightweight backup clients on physical machines, virtual machines, or Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances without specific hardware. You can configure scheduled backup plans in the Cloud Backup console.
High backup performance
Cloud Backup allows multiple clients to back up a file system concurrently, which greatly improves the backup efficiency.
Deduplication and compression
The Cloud Backup client compresses and deduplicates the file data that you need to back up at the source end. If you back up on-premises files, the feature helps you minimize the bandwidth of cloud backup and the storage space occupied by backup data on the cloud.
Immutable backup against accidental or malicious deletion
Cloud Backup provides the immutable backup feature based on backup vaults. Backup data cannot be deleted by any account or method before the configured retention period expires.
Geo-redundancy
If you need to back up data to a remote location, you can create a mirror vault for a backup vault to quickly protect critical data.
How it works
First, you must install and activate a Cloud Backup client on each physical machine, virtual machine, or ECS instance. You must log on to the Cloud Backup console to add a CPFS file system as the data source. Then, you can use the Cloud Backup client to back up specified files in the file system.
When a backup job is running, the Cloud Backup client scans the specified folders to identify the files to be backed up, compresses and deduplicates the source data, and then uploads incremental data to a backup vault. If multiple Cloud Backup clients are installed, you can concurrently back up data from your CPFS file system to improve backup performance.
Cloud Backup uses an incremental-forever backup strategy. Except for the first full backup job, each subsequent backup job uploads only the data that has changed compared with the previous backup job. A complete full backup is synthesized on the cloud to minimize network and storage consumption.
When you delete a backup point, only the data slices exclusive to the backup point are deleted without affecting other backup points.
After a full backup point is deleted, subsequent data restoration is not affected. If you delete a full backup point, only the data slices exclusive to the backup point are deleted. Data slices referenced by other backup points are not deleted.
If you delete a backup point, incremental data generated after the backup point can still be backed up and restored. The incremental-forever backup strategy ensures that the first backup job performs a full backup and subsequent backup jobs perform incremental backups.
Cloud Backup allows you to back up on-premises files to Alibaba Cloud over the Internet, virtual private networks (VPNs), or Express Connect circuits. If you back up data over the Internet, you must make sure that the server on which the Cloud Backup client is installed can access the Internet. You do not need to expose the IP address of the server to the Internet.
Procedure
The following procedure shows how to back up a CPFS in the Cloud Backup console.
You can activate Cloud Backup for free. You are charged for the storage usage of backup vaults that are created in Cloud Backup. For more information, see Billing methods and billable items.
The Cloud Backup client is used to establish communication and management services between backup nodes (physical machines, virtual machines, or ECS instances) and Cloud Backup.
Add a CPFS as a data source in the Cloud Backup console.
When you create a backup plan, configure the backup vault, source path, backup cycle, and retention period. Cloud Backup starts the backup plan and continuously backs up files from the source file system.
After you create a backup plan, the first backup job performs a full backup and subsequent backup jobs perform incremental backups.
If the region that you select supports backup policies, you can set a backup plan only by associating it with a backup policy. Cloud Backup periodically backs up CPFS based on the backup policy.
To view the regions that support backup policies, click Policy Center in the left-side navigation pane of the Cloud Backup console. For information about how to create a backup policy, see Create a backup policy section in the topic of "Manage backup policies".
If a file in the source file system is lost or damaged, you can restore full files or files that meet the specified conditions based on historical backup points. You can restore data to the source CPFS or a new CPFS.
Billing
When you use the CPFS backup feature, the following fees are incurred:
Storage usage fees. You are charged based on the storage usage of backup vaults. You can view the storage usage of backup vaults on the Overview page in the Cloud Backup console. For more information, see Pricing of Cloud Backup.
In addition, Cloud Backup charges the following fees based on specific configurations or operations:
Geo-redundancy fees
If you create a remote mirror vault to copy data from a backup vault in an Alibaba Cloud region to another region for geo-redundancy, you are charged for the storage capacity of the mirror vault and the cross-region replication traffic. The size of the mirror vault is the same as that of the source backup vault, and the pricing is the same.
Outbound traffic fees
If you restore data from a backup vault to an on-premises file system, you are charged for the outbound traffic.
Traffic fees are calculated based on the data volume.
