Backup policies for Cloud Pools

A backup policy defines when your virtual machines are backed up and how long those backups are kept. You create a policy once, then attach it to the VMs you want protected.

The pool Backups tab (and each VM Backups tab) is the current product. Scheduled policies and on-demand runs live there.

What you need

• An active Cloud Pool with at least one VM
• Backup storage available for your organization at that site (see View backup storage usage)
• A technical-role user on the organization

Create a policy

1. Open Compute → Cloud pools and select a pool.
2. Open the Backups tab.
3. Click New backup policy.
4. Fill in the fields:

Field	What to enter
Name	A short label you will recognize later (for example, nightly)
How often	Daily, Weekdays (Mon–Fri), Weekly, or Custom
Time	When the backup should start, in UTC (24-hour clock)
Keep last	How many of the most recent backups to retain

5. Click Create.

Advanced retention (keep daily / weekly / monthly) is optional and usually unnecessary for a simple week of dailies. Leave those blank unless you need longer-term archives.

You can also attach a policy while creating a VM.

Schedule options

• Daily — every day at the time you choose
• Weekdays (Mon–Fri) — weekdays only
• Weekly — one day of the week
• Custom — advanced calendar schedule (for example mon,wed 02:00 or mon..fri 03:00)

All backup schedules run in UTC, not your local timezone.

Example: 7-day daily retention

Setting	Value
How often	Daily
Time	03:00 UTC
Keep last	7

That takes one backup every night and keeps the seven most recent. When day eight runs, the oldest of those seven is removed automatically.

With daily backups, keep last 7 ≈ one week of history.

Attach the policy to VMs

Policies do not protect anything until they are attached.

1. Stay on the pool's Backups tab.
2. In VMs in this pool, choose a policy for each VM (or leave "No policy attached").
3. A VM can have only one policy at a time. Attaching a different policy replaces the previous one.

You can change or remove the attachment later without deleting the policy itself.

Disable or delete a policy

• Disable (edit the policy → turn Enabled off) stops future backups but keeps the policy.
• Delete stops future backups under that policy. Backups already taken are not deleted when you remove the policy.

About advanced retention

These settings are optional extras on top of Keep last:

Setting	Meaning
Keep daily	Also keep the latest backup from each of the last N days
Keep weekly	Also keep the latest backup from each of the last N weeks
Keep monthly	Also keep the latest backup from each of the last N months

They do not change how often backups run — only the schedule does that. For most "nightly for a week" setups, Keep last alone is enough.

Tips

• Start simple: one daily policy and keep last 7, then attach it to the VMs that matter.
• Give policies clear names so the per-VM dropdown stays readable as you grow.
• Check Backup storage on the pool Backups tab if you need to see how much backup storage you are using (see View backup storage usage).
• Snapshots (VM Snapshots tab) are separate from backups — see Snapshots for Cloud Pool VMs.

Still stuck?

Open a support ticket from Support → Tickets if a policy will not create, attach, or show as active after a few minutes.