Automatic snapshot policy

Key Capabilities

• Custom creation frequency

  Specify the days of the week and the times of day for snapshot creation based on your business needs, with support for multiple time points per day. Provide high-frequency protection for core business databases and low-frequency runs for test and archive disks, covering diverse data protection requirements.

• Custom retention with automatic deletion on expiration

  Set a retention period in days, or choose to retain snapshots permanently. Snapshots are automatically deleted upon expiration without manual intervention, enabling automated snapshot lifecycle management.

• Multiple resource association types

  • Bind by disk for precise control: Manually select disks to bind, with support for adding or removing them at any time. Ideal for precise protection of specific disks.

  • Dynamically bind by instance tags for unified multi-disk protection: Dynamically bind disks based on ECS instance tags. All disks attached to an instance are automatically included in protection, with no need for per-disk configuration. Tag changes take effect at the next snapshot time point—instances are automatically included when a tag is added and removed when the tag is detached, eliminating manual maintenance of binding relationships. Multiple tags follow a logical AND relationship, enabling precise matching of target instances. When all disks attached to an instance are ESSDs, a snapshot-consistent group is created first to ensure data consistency across disks.

• Cross-region replication

  After cross-region replication is enabled, snapshots are periodically replicated to the destination region, and you can set a separate retention period for the new snapshots in the destination region. This enables cross-region disaster recovery and meets compliance requirements for off-site data retention.

• Multiple overlapping policies

  A single disk can be bound to multiple policies, each executed independently without interference. Short-cycle policies create snapshots frequently with short retention, ideal for quickly rolling back routine mishandling; long-cycle policies create snapshots infrequently with long retention, suitable for archiving and compliance requirements.

Use Cases

• Daily backup and rapid recovery

  Automatically create disk snapshots on a preset schedule to safeguard your data. In the event of an anomaly, you can roll back using snapshots to recover from data loss caused by accidental deletion, viruses, system failures, and more.

• Batch backup for large-scale instances

  Associate policies by instance tags. When you add a new instance, simply bind it with the tag, and all disks attached to it are automatically included in protection—no per-disk configuration required. This suits business scenarios with large instance fleets and frequent elastic scaling.

• Balancing high-frequency protection and long-term archiving

  Bind multiple policies to the same disk to meet backup needs at different granularities. High-frequency policies with short-term retention support quick rollback of routine mishandling; low-frequency policies with long-term retention meet archiving and compliance requirements. This strikes a balance between data protection strength and storage costs.

• Off-site disaster recovery

  Enable cross-region replication to replicate data to a remote region, meeting regulatory requirements for off-site data retention.

• Protection for databases and multi-disk applications

  Databases are typically deployed across multiple disks. Creating snapshots for each disk independently makes it difficult to align snapshot time points across disks, which can lead to data inconsistency after recovery. After associating a policy by instance tags, when all disks attached to an instance are ESSDs, a snapshot-consistent group is created first to ensure data consistency across disks.

Operation Guide

The following list describes the common operations for automatic snapshot policies, from creation to deletion.

Billing details

Creating an automatic snapshot policy is free of charge. However, you are charged for snapshot storage based on the size of the snapshots and their retention period. For more information, see Snapshot billing.

Limits

Note the following limits when you use automatic snapshot policies: