Clumio backup

SecureVault backup

SecureVault backups represent full, standalone copies of your assets. Each backup is saved remotely to Clumio and retained for the length of time set by the policy. During the retention period, you can restore an asset from any unexpired backups. After the retention period expires, the backup is destroyed.

There are different tiers available for SecureVault backups based on the asset type (EBS, EC2, RDS and so on); SecureVault Lite, SecureVault Standard, and SecureVault Archive, see SecureVault backup tier options for more information.

On-demand backup

On-demand backups represent single backups that are manually generated at any point in time. For example, you might want to generate a backup on demand just before you perform a maintenance upgrade. You can take on-demand backups of EBS volumes, EC2 instances, DynamoDB tables, and Microsoft SQL Server databases running on EC2 instances. You cannot take on-demand backups of AWS S3 assets or RDS resources.

You can take an on demand backup of an asset from the AWS > Protect > [Account ] > [Asset type] page, if that asset type supports on-demand backups. You can generate an on-demand SecureVault Backups and on-demand Snap
Specify the on-demand backup retention period, which determines how long Clumio should keep each on-demand backup that is generated, see Backup frequency and retention for details. By default, on-demand backups are retained for 7 days.
The Backup destination option for a SecureVault Backup (of an AWS asset type) is set to In Region by default, select a specific region from the drop down list if you want to save the on-demand backup to another region.

Clumio-managed AWS snapshots

Clumio also lets you take snapshots of your assets. You can enable Clumio-managed snapshots for AWS EBS volumes, AWS EC2 instances, and AWS DynamoDB databases from Clumio. Each snapshot is stored in the same location as the source asset and retained for the length of time set by the policy.

You can also manage your Amazon RDS snapshots from the Clumio platform, see RDS backups for more information.

Backup frequency and retention

The backup frequency specifies how often data should be backed up. The backup frequency is determined by the amount of data loss that can be tolerated in case of a disaster or data corruption event. This is also referred to as the Recovery Point Objective (RPO).

The retention period specifies how long each backup should be kept. The retention period depends on the asset type and backup frequency. For example, Amazon RDS resources might have a granular backup frequency of “every 1 day” with a retention period of “7 days,” while EBS volumes might have a backup frequency of “every 4 hours” with a retention period of “1 day”. During the retention period, you can restore an asset from any of its unexpired backups.

For most asset types, up to five recurring backup frequencies can be configured. Some asset types do not support hourly recurring backups.

Hourly: Generates backups with ‘hours’ as the unit of measurement for backup frequency. The available options for hourly backups are; backup every [1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24] hours. After the initial seeding, subsequent backups are generated at the frequency specified and retained for the specified number of days, up to a maximum of 180 days. If you select hourly backups, the Backup Window option is not supported, but you can select a fixed start time for your hourly backups.
Daily: Generates backups with ‘days’ as the unit of measurement for backup frequency. After the initial seeding, subsequent backups are generated at the frequency specified, calculated from the first of every month. For example, if we generate a backup every 7 days (e.g. for RDS granular record retrieval (GRR)), then subsequent backups will trigger on 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th of the month and then again on the 1st of the next month. Backups are retained for the specified number of days, up to a maximum of 550 days.
Weekly: Generates backups with ‘weeks’ as the unit of measurement for backup frequency. After the initial seeding, subsequent backups are generated at the frequency specified, calculated from the day of the week specified and retained for the specified number of weeks, up to a maximum of 156 weeks. If you don’t select a specific day, and select the “Any day of the week” option, then Clumio internally selects a day at random.
Monthly: Generates backups with ‘months’ as the unit of measurement for backup frequency. After the initial seeding, subsequent backups are generated every month and retained for the specified number of months, up to a maximum of 84 months.
Yearly: Generates backups with ‘years’ as the unit of measurement for backup frequency. After the initial seeding, a backup is generated at the frequency specified and retained for the specified number of years, up to a maximum of 99 years.

If multiple backups happen on the same day and time, only one backup is taken and retained based on the longest retention period. For example, if a policy is configured to take daily, monthly, and yearly backups and all three backups happen to fall on the same day, only one backup is taken and retained per the configured yearly retention period.

Backup window

Most asset types support backup windows. When configuring backups, optionally enable a backup window to specify the time zone and start and end times of the backup window. When a backup window is enabled, backups will only occur between the stated start and end times. For example, if your applications are busy during the day, set a backup window to run overnight, starting at 8:00 PM and ending at 8:00 AM. Note that recurring backups usually start about 5 minutes after the start time. Backups that are still in progress by the end of the backup window will be aborted. You cannot define a backup window if you enable backups to occur in hourly increments.

Backup windows do not impact on-demand backups; in other words, when you generate an on-demand backup, it starts immediately, ignoring any configured backup windows. For more information, see on-demand backup.

To schedule backup seeding jobs to also only run within the specified backup window, select the Start Time check box in the Backup window section of the panel. If not selected, backup seeding will occur as soon as the policy is applied to an asset.

Snap windows work the same way as backup windows.

Backup destination

You can choose to save EBS Volume, EC2 instance, RDS resource, and DynamoDB database backups to the same region the back is taken from or you can select another region that your account can access. The In-region option is selected by default. You can select a region from the drop down list and the backup is saved to that selected region. If you chose to save the backup in-region and then later edit the policy and change to a specific region, you may incur AWS transfer fees.Changing the backup region may cause certain assets associated with the policy to re-establish compliance under the new backup region.

Backup and restore priority

Clumio prioritizes backups and restores in the following order:

Restores: Restores are given first priority, even over recurring backups.
Recurring backups: Recurring backups are given the second highest priority.
On-demand backups: On-demand and recurring backups have the same priority. However, if you start an on-demand backup when a recurring backup is underway, the on-demand backup starts after the recurring backup is complete. On-demand backups are not retried.
Recurring backup retries: If a recurring backup fails, it is automatically retried up to 2 times. Retries have a lower priority than recurring and on-demand backups.