The Katapult system makes use of one or more user-defined disk backup policies to create backup copies of your organisation's data. There can be more than one backup policy in existence per disk or virtual machine which enables the creation of backups running at varying intervals, i.e. daily, weekly or monthly backups.
Example Virtual Machine
- Disk A
- Disk B
- Disk C
Looking at the above example machine you might wish to backup all of the disk once per week and this can be created at the machine level. However, you might want to backup the contents of Disk C more frequently than that and so create a separate backup policy at the disk level for once per day. You can create any combination of backup policies to suit your organisations requirements.
Backups are very different to snapshots by design. A description of each is below.
A backup is a physical copy of your data be that a single disk or more widely the entirety of a virtual machine. A single backup will be connected with a single backup policy and will only be taken as defined by said policy or when said policy is initiated manually on an ad-hoc basis. Backups are stored offsite at a data centre separate to that of your virtual machine and are therefore charged separately to the resource(s) in which they relate. Disk level backups can be restored into a new disk and then attached to a machine.
A snapshot represents a single disk at a given moment in time much in the same a way backup does; however, it is not possible to schedule snapshots like you can with disk backup policies. Katapult will take automatic snapshots at least once per day but; unlike with disk backup policies, it can not be guaranteed that snapshots of disks relating to the same machine will be taken at the same time and an automatic snapshot will only be retained until the next daily snapshot is taken. Snapshot are not stored offsite and are therefore not charged separately. A snapshot is ideal for situations where a quick rollback would be ideal and you can create ad-hoc snapshots as you require. Snapshots can be restored into a new disk and then attached to a machine. Snapshots are discussed in the snapshots how-to guide.
On creating a backup policy on either a single disk, virtual machine or perhaps more widely, you have to define:
Disk backup policies can currently be created for the below resource. Click a resource type to view the relevant backup how-to guide:
See the the backup restoration how-to guide.