Backup Policy

1. What is Backup Policy?

A backup policy is a set of rules and standards that define how a system backs up data. It includes details about how often to back up, what data to back up, what types of backups to create, and data retention rules. Simply put, a backup policy is the “blueprint” for your data backup process.

1. Why is Backup Policy important?

• Data protection: Helps ensure that your data is always secure and recoverable when needed.

• Optimize resources: Helps you use storage resources efficiently by backing up only the data you need and retaining backups for a reasonable period of time.

• Regulatory Compliance: Make sure your backups comply with data security and storage regulations.

1. Structure of a Backup Policy

A backup policy includes the following elements:

• Backup frequency:

  • Hourly: Hourly backup.

  • Daily: Daily backup.

  • Weekly: Weekly backup.

  • Monthly: Monthly backup.

• Job run time: Time to start automatic backup.

• Rule to retain number of full backups: Specifies the number of full backups to retain.

• Rule to create incremental backups between two full backups: Specifies the number of incremental backups created between two full backups.

• Backup method: Specify the backup method (e.g. full backup, incremental backup).

• Notification: Notify when the backup process is successful or failed.

1. How Backup Policy works

   1. Schedule: The system will automatically perform backups according to the schedule configured in the policy.

   2. Data Backup: The system will copy data according to the defined rules.

   3. Data Retention: The system will automatically delete old backups to ensure compliance with data retention rules.

2. Example of a Backup Policy

• For example, the user installs a policy set as shown below:

• Explain how it works:

Day	Launch time	Backup type	Retention applies	Delete backup	Note
1	1:00	Full	Hourly and Daily	Are not
1	7:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
1	13:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
1	19:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
2	1:00	Full	Hourly and Daily	Are not	According to retention daily, only 1 full copy is kept. If only retention daily is applied, the first full copy will be deleted. But applying rentention daily (keeping 2 copies, so the first copy will still be kept)
2	7:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
2	13:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
2	19:00	Incremental	Hourly	Are not
3	1:00	Full	Hourly and Daily	Have	According to retention daily (keep 2 full versions), therefore, the first full version and 3 incremental versions after that full version will be deleted.

Above is an example of how the policy works for the first 3 days, the following days will continue to work as set if nothing changes.