Backup policies
Schedule independent recovery copies, retention, and verification.
Backup policies copy selected volume recovery points to a configured backup destination. A policy defines selection, schedule, consistency, retention, and failure notification.
Create a destination
Use Backup destinations for object prefixes, addressing style, capability tests, and interrupted multipart transfers.
Open Storage → Backup destinations and register an approved object-storage or managed backup destination. Set the region, credentials, encryption settings, and connectivity path. Test write, read, and retention permissions before use.
A destination must be permitted by the organization's residency policy. Credentials belong to the destination configuration and are not copied into guest user data. Use Secrets to rotate them.
Configure a policy
Select explicit resource IDs, consistency groups, or a label selector. Selection is resolved when the run starts. A selector change can therefore add a new volume to the next run without changing the previous run's manifest.
Set a calendar expression and named time zone, an approved destination, and at least one retention tier. Consistency defaults to crash-consistent; a required guest or application mode fails rather than downgrading when its prerequisites are unavailable. Backup hooks document preparation and resume failures separately.
Verification defaults to objects and manifest. If the installation disables automatic verification after copying, use the verification operation to complete that requirement. An unverified transfer does not satisfy a policy that requires verification. A restore test requires its own isolated profile and resource budget. Disabling a policy stops future scheduled runs without canceling a transfer already accepted. The Backup policy API specifies the complete request.
Use a named time zone for schedules. Daylight-saving transitions can change elapsed time between calendar runs; use UTC when a fixed calendar interpretation is required. An overlapping run is queued or skipped according to the policy's explicit overlap setting, which defaults to Skip.
Execution
A run resolves its selected resources, creates the requested recovery point, copies required data, and verifies the resulting manifest. It succeeds only when the required members are complete. The recovery point lists source IDs, capture time, consistency mode, destination, and verification status.
A partially copied backup is not offered as a completed application restore. Retrying a run resumes reusable transfer work when available and records a new attempt. It does not change the source capture time of an existing recovery point.
Retention
Retention chains and holds determine which shared objects remain required. Retention applies to completed recovery points. Deleting a source droplet or disabling a policy does not immediately expire its retained copies. Review retention locks before changing policy or deleting a project.
Policy changes apply to subsequent retention evaluations. A destination-enforced lock can reject deletion even when Infra's policy marks a copy as expired. The run reports the retained object and the next recovery action.
Verification and recovery objectives
Metadata verification checks that the expected manifest and objects are present. A restore verification creates temporary volumes and validates the selected profile revision, including its cleanup outcome. Neither result replaces application-level testing.
Measure recovery point age from the latest completed capture, not the last scheduled start. Measure recovery duration through an actual restore exercise. Copy backlog, failed hooks, and unreachable destinations can increase the gap between the configured schedule and the latest recoverable data.
Failures
Use alerts for failed runs, recovery-point age, and destination capacity. Authentication errors require correcting the destination secret. Residency errors require an allowed destination. Guest hook failures require repairing the application procedure before rerunning the policy.