Activate the Cloud Backup service to protect your important data from loss caused by events such as accidental file deletion or server viruses. Activating Cloud Backup is free of charge. No fees are incurred if you do not perform any backup operations. Therefore, you do not need to disable the Cloud Backup service if it is not in use. This topic describes how to activate the Cloud Backup service.
Prerequisites
You have created an Alibaba Cloud account and completed identity verification. To create an account, go to the Alibaba Cloud website. For more information about creating an account, see Create an Alibaba Cloud account. For more information about identity verification, see Individual identity verification or Enterprise identity verification.
Background information
Cloud Backup is a unified disaster recovery platform from Alibaba Cloud. It is a simple, efficient, and secure data management service that provides backup, disaster recovery, and policy-based archiving for Alibaba Cloud services and on-premises data centers. It supports various Alibaba Cloud services, such as ECS instance backups, ECS databases, file systems, NAS, and OSS. It also supports on-premises resources, such as files, databases, virtual machines, and large-scale NAS.
Billing
You are not charged if you only activate the Cloud Backup service without performing any backup operations. Fees are incurred only when you perform backup operations in the Cloud Backup console. For more information about billable items, see Billing methods and billable items.
To view the details of your bills, see Resource usage and bills.
The ECS instance backup and disk backup features are orchestration services provided by Cloud Backup that are based on the snapshot capabilities of cloud disks. To use these features, you must activate the snapshot service. When you perform an ECS instance backup or a disk backup for the first time, you are prompted on the interface to activate the snapshot service. Snapshots are billed separately. For more information about snapshot billing, see Snapshot billing.
Enabling the anti-ransomware feature in Security Center automatically activates Cloud Backup and sends you a notification. As long as you do not perform any backup operations in the Cloud Backup console, you will not incur any Cloud Backup fees.
Activate Cloud Backup
You need to activate Cloud Backup only once.
Log on to the Alibaba Cloud official website.
In the Alibaba Cloud Management Console, choose Cloud Backup.
On the service activation page, read and select the Cloud Backup Agreement, and then click Activate Service.
After the service is activated, the Cloud Backup console indicates that the service is activated. You can then perform backups.
NoteActivating the Cloud Backup service enables it for your account but does not automatically back up any data. You must use the service features to back up your important data. If you only activate the service without performing backups, you cannot recover data that is lost or accidentally deleted.
Disable Cloud Backup
ImportantYou cannot disable the Cloud Backup service after it is activated. If you no longer need Cloud Backup, delete all billable resources, such as backup vaults, backup plans, and backup clients. You are billed for the resources on the day of deletion. Billing stops the following day. You will no longer receive bills for Cloud Backup. For more information, see How do I stop billing for Cloud Backup?. Note: You cannot recover data after you delete its backups.
To view the details of your bills, see Resource usage and bills.
References
Cloud Backup provides resource plans for various backup scenarios. These plans offer significant discounts to help you save costs. For more information, see Resource plan purchase guide.
Cloud Backup supports backing up MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server databases that are deployed on ECS instances and local servers. For more information about the procedures, fees, and benefits, see Features (ECS databases) and Features (on-premises databases).