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*
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
	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.