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Overview

A backup captures an entire virtual machine and stores it separately from the volumes it came from. That separation is the point: a snapshot protects you from a mistake, a backup protects you from losing the machine.
Navigation: Storage → Backups. Titled Backups, subtitled “Manage VM backups and restorations”.

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You need a backup plan first

This is the thing that catches people out. A machine cannot be backed up until it is enrolled in a backup plan (a backup offering). Without one, both the manual-backup dialog and the schedule dialog stop you:
No backup plan assigned This VM must be enrolled in a backup plan before backups can be created.
with an Enable Backups button that opens the plan selector.
Backups are unavailable in a region where no backup offering is enabled for the zone. The plan selector says so directly: “Backups are unavailable in this region because no backup offering is enabled for this zone. No backup action will be sent.” That’s a platform configuration matter — contact support rather than retrying.

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Changing plans is not atomic

You cannot swap one plan for another in a single step. The console blocks it deliberately:
Automatic plan replacement is unavailable because removing and assigning plans is not atomic. Open this VM’s Backups tab, explicitly remove the current plan, then assign the new plan.
So changing a plan is: go to the machine’s Backups tab → remove the current plan → assign the new one. During that gap the machine is unprotected, so don’t do it casually on something important.

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Columns

Backup ID, Type, Status, Size, and Created are sortable. Expanding a row shows Backup ID, Virtual Machine, Type, Size, Created, Zone, Account, and Status.

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Types

Incremental backups depend on the chain of backups before them. Deleting an older backup that a later incremental depends on can compromise the newer one — the console does not warn you about this. When pruning, prefer deleting from the oldest full backup boundary rather than picking rows out of the middle.

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Statuses

Values display exactly as the platform reports them, so you’ll see BackedUp rather than Backed Up in the table, while the filter shows the spaced version.

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Filtering

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Taking a manual backup

Create Backup opens Create Manual Backup — “Create an on-demand backup of a virtual machine”. Select a Virtual Machine. If it has a plan you’ll see the plan with a Change Plan button; if not, the enrolment prompt. The dialog then explains what happens:
  • A full snapshot of the VM is created immediately.
  • This may take several minutes depending on disk size.
  • The VM will remain running during the process.
Success reports “Backup started, this may take a few minutes”.
A manual backup is always a full backup, and the machine keeps running throughout. It is not application-consistent — the platform doesn’t quiesce your database. For transactional data, take a database-level dump as well.

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Restoring

Two different operations, and picking the wrong one is expensive.
Reverts the machine to the captured state. The dialog lists the consequences:
  • The VM will be stopped during the restore process
  • All current data will be replaced with the backup state
  • Any changes made after this backup was taken will be lost
  • The VM will need to be restarted after restoring
Success reports “Backup restore initiated”.
This destroys the machine’s current state. If there’s any chance the current state matters — even a log you haven’t collected — take a fresh backup or snapshot before restoring an old one.
“A new virtual machine will be created using this backup as the base. The VM will be an exact copy of the state captured in this backup.”You choose a Zone. The original machine is untouched.
This is almost always the safer choice when investigating. Restore into a new machine, confirm the data is what you expect, then decide whether to cut over — rather than overwriting production to find out.

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Deleting

Deletion requires typing a confirmation: either the backup’s ID or the phrase delete me.

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Backups versus snapshots

Different subsystems, not two words for one thing.
Use both, for different failure modes. Snapshots are fast, cheap, and self-service — right for “I broke it ten minutes ago”. Backups are separate, whole-machine, and managed — right for “the machine is gone” or “we need last month’s state”.

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Setting backups up during VM creation

The create wizard’s Backups step enrols a machine and optionally schedules it as part of provisioning, so a new machine is protected from the start. See Virtual Machines. That setup runs after the machine exists, as follow-up work, and it’s deliberately cautious:
If backup setup reports an unknown outcome, check the machine’s Backups tab before retrying. The platform deliberately stops rather than risk a duplicate assignment, so the safe next step is to look, not to retry.

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Worked example: protect a production machine

1

Enrol it in a plan

On the machine’s Backups tab, or from Create Backup → Enable Backups. Pick the plan matching your retention requirement — retention comes from the plan, so this choice is the one that determines how far back you can go.
2

Take a manual baseline

Create Backup on the machine. Don’t wait for the schedule’s first run to have your first restore point.
3

Add a schedule

See Backup Schedules. Daily at 02:00 UTC is the default and a reasonable starting point.
4

Verify a backup reaches BackedUp

Filter Status to Backed Up and confirm your machine appears. Creating is not yet a restore point.
5

Test a restore before you need one

Use Create VM from Backup into a spare zone and confirm the copy boots with the data you expect. An untested backup is a hope, not a plan.

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Empty and error states

Backup Schedules

Automate them.

Snapshots

The lighter, per-volume alternative.

Virtual Machines

Enrol a machine as you create it.

Quotas and limits

Backups consume a separate storage quota.