Backing up instances

With R‑Cloud, you can back up your instance data securely and efficiently.

Prerequisites

  • For AWS instances whose data you plan to back up from one to a target in another : The ID of the to which the instance belongs must be specified as the Principal element in the role trust policy of the IAM role within the that contains the target. For details on policies and permissions in IAM, see AWS documentation.

  • For AWS instances running Windows for which you want to ensure application consistency of backup data:

    • You must create an IAM role for VSS-enabled snapshots and attach it to the instance. For details on how to create an IAM role for VSS-enabled snapshots, see AWS documentation.

    • All attached disks must be online.

    Note  You can check if a VSS snapshot was successfully created for the instance in the backup task summary and report.

  • Only if you plan to use pre-snapshot or post-snapshot scripts. Access to data must be enabled. For details, see Enabling access to data.

Limitations

  • For AWS instances: If an instance has private access configured, you cannot store its backup data on a Google Cloud target. For more information about private access, see AWS documentation for VPC endpoints.

  • For Google Cloud instances: If an instance has private access configured, you cannot store its backup data on an Amazon S3 target. For more information about private access, see Google Cloud documentation for Private Google Access.

Considerations

  • When backing up an instance with multiple disks, R‑Cloud performs a parallel backup. In the Tasks panel, you can view details on the backup progress, including the progress of backing up each individual disk.

  • When backing up an instance, R‑Cloud can reduce the size of the backup data that will be transferred to the target by using data compression:

    • If backing up the instance to the selected target for the first time, the data is compressed by default.

    • If backing up the instance to a target that stores the previous backup data of the instance, the backup data is not compressed. This is done to avoid performing a full backup due to the changed properties of the compressed data.

  • Only if you plan to restore individual files or folders. To use the default view when restoring individual files or folders, access to data must be enabled and instance discovery must complete successfully before the backup is made. If the default view is not available, you can restore the files or folders by using the filesystem view. For instructions on how to enable access to data, see Enabling access to data.

To access the Instances panel, in the navigation pane, click Instances Instances.

Procedure

  1. Select the instances that you want to back up. You can update the instance list by clicking Synchronize Refresh. In a protection set with a large number of sources, the update may take a while.

    To narrow down the list of displayed instances, use the filtering options as described in Filtering and sorting data.

  2. Click Policies Set Policy. The Set Policy dialog box opens.

  3. From the list of available policies, select the preferred policy.

  4. Click Assign to assign the policy to the selected instances.

    Important  Only if one or more instances that you want to back up reside on a different cloud platform than the target defined in the policy. Click Assign Anyway if you want to assign the policy to the instance. This may result in data transfer fees. To cancel assigning the policy, click Cancel.

When you assign a policy to an instance, a backup task starts immediately. Subsequent backups are scheduled according to the values defined in the policy.

Note  The first backup task may be delayed if a backup of the instance already exists.

You can also perform a manual backup of individual instances at any time. For details, see Performing manual backups.