Specifying Daily Schedule

To create a daily schedule for the backup policy, at the Schedule step of the wizard, do the following:

  1. Set the Daily retention toggle to On and click Edit Daily Settings.
  2. In the Daily schedule window, select hours when the backup policy will create cloud-native snapshots and image-level backups. Use the Run at drop-down list to choose whether you want the backup policy to run every day, on weekdays (Monday through Friday) or on specific days.

If you want to protect Azure VM data more frequently, you can instruct the backup policy to create multiple cloud-native snapshots per hour. To do that, click the link to the right of the Snapshots hour selection area, and specify the number of cloud-native snapshots that the backup policy will create within an hour.

Note

Consider the following:

  • Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure does not create image-level backups independently from cloud-native snapshots. That is why when you select hours for image-level backups, the same hours are automatically selected for cloud-native snapshots. To learn how Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure performs backup operations, see Protecting Azure VMs.
  • Since Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure runs retention sessions at 12:15 AM according to the time zone set on the backup appliance, it is not recommended that you schedule backup policies to execute at 12:15 AM. Otherwise, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure will not be able to run the retention sessions.
  1. In the Daily retention section, configure retention policy settings for the daily schedule:
  • For cloud-native snapshots, specify the number of restore points that you want to keep in a snapshot chain.

If the restore point limit is exceeded, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure removes the earliest restore point from the chain. For more information, see Retention Policy for Snapshots.

Important

To allow the CBT mechanism to be used when processing Azure VM data, you must keep at least one snapshot in the snapshot chain. However, by design, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure permanently retains 2 cloud-native snapshots in the chain due to the CBT mechanism limitations. To learn how the CBT mechanism works, see Changed Block Tracking.

  • For image-level backups, specify the number of days (or months) for which you want to keep restore points in a backup chain.

If a restore point is older than the specified time limit, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure removes the restore point from the chain. For more information, see Retention Policy for Backups.

  1. In the Repository section, select a backup repository where the created image-level backups will be stored.

For a backup repository to be displayed in the Repository list, it must be added to Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure as described in section Adding Backup Repositories.

  1. To save changes made to the backup policy settings, click Apply.

Adding Backup Policy