Backup cheat sheet

The following table summarizes the most common backup parameters.

WHAT TO BACK UP		ITEMS TO BACK UP Selection methods	WHERE TO BACK UP	SCHEDULE Backup schemes
Disks/volumes (physical machines A machine that is backed up by an agent installed in the operating system.)		Direct selection Policy rules File filters	Cloud Local folder Network folder NFS* Secure Zone**	Always incremental (Single-file) Always full Weekly full, Daily incremental Monthly full, Weekly differential, Daily incremental (GFS) Custom (F-D-I)
Disks/volumes (virtual machines A virtual machine that is backed up at a hypervisor level by an external agent such as Agent for VMware or Agent for Hyper-V. A virtual machine with an agent inside is treated as physical from the backup standpoint.)		Policy rules File filters	Cloud Local folder Network folder NFS*
Files (physical machines only A machine that is backed up by an agent installed in the operating system.)		Direct selection Policy rules File filters	Cloud Local folder Network folder NFS* Secure Zone**	Always incremental (Single-file) Always full Weekly full, Daily incremental Monthly full, Weekly differential, Daily incremental (GFS) Custom (F-D-I)
ESXi configuration		Direct selection	Local folder Network folder NFS*
Websites (files and MySQL databases)		Direct selection	Cloud	—
System state		Direct selection	Cloud Local folder Network folder	Always full Weekly full, daily incremental Custom (F-I) Always incremental (Single-file) - only for SQL databases
SQL databases		Direct selection
Exchange databases		Direct selection
Microsoft 365	Mailboxes (local Agent for Microsoft 365)	Direct selection	Cloud Local folder Network folder	Always incremental (Single-file)
	Mailboxes (cloud Agent for Microsoft 365)	Direct selection	Cloud	Up to 6 backups per day
	Public folders	Direct selection
	Teams	Direct selection
	OneDrive files	Direct selection Policy rules
	SharePoint Online data	Direct selection Policy rules
Google Workspace	Gmail mailboxes	Direct selection	Cloud	Up to 6 backups per day
	Google Drive files	Direct selection Policy rules
	Shared drive files	Direct selection Policy rules

* Backup to NFS shares is not available in Windows.

** Secure Zone cannot be created on a Mac.

Backups to public cloud require a Local backup storage quota.

How long to keep the backups?

You can keep your backups forever or configure a retention period by the following criteria:

By backup age (single rule / per backup set)
By number of backups
By total size of backups
The By total size of backups retention rule is not available with the Always incremental (single-file) backup scheme or when backing up to the cloud storage.

See Retention rules.