Ironcore Backup Solution
User Guide
Create on-demand backups, schedule recurring jobs, browse snapshots, and restore
full VMs or individual files using the Dashboard or CLI.
Admin Guide
Provision datastores, configure retention policies, set up cross-site replication,
integrate tape libraries, and harden access control.
CLI Reference
Full command reference for managing backup jobs, restore operations, datastores,
verification, and replication from the command line.
Polystack Compute
Compute service provides the instances that Ironcore Backup Solution protects
using block-level change tracking and live-restore.
Key Capabilities
Changed Block Tracking (CBT)
Hypervisor-level CBT identifies precisely which blocks changed since the
previous backup, so incrementals read and transmit only modified data.
Full and incremental backups for VMs, containers, and physical hosts.
Global Deduplication
Identical data blocks are stored once across all backup sources. Combined with
Zstandard compression to minimise storage footprint.
Host-Side Encryption
AES-256 in Galois/Counter Mode (GCM). Data is encrypted before leaving the
host — for VMs and containers this happens on the hypervisor (agentless);
for physical hosts it happens on the host itself.
Cross-Site Replication
Asynchronous near-real-time replication from the Primary DC site to the Backup
site. Encrypted in transit with end-to-end integrity verification.
File-Level and VM-Level Restore
Restore a full VM in seconds with live-restore, or open a snapshot and download
a single file, directory, or archive as ZIP.
Tape and Object Storage
Long-term archival to LTO-5 and newer tape libraries. Native support for
S3-compatible object storage as a backup backend.
Verification and Mock Drills
SHA-256 checksum verification on every backup. Schedule periodic verification
jobs and bi-annual mock recovery drills.
Ransomware Protection
Append-only datastores, immutable chunks, fine-grained access control, and
off-site replication ensure recoverability when primary storage is compromised.
How It Works
For virtual machines and system containers, the backup pipeline runs on the Ironcore hypervisor host — block-level change tracking, encryption, and deduplication happen with no software installed inside the guest (fully agentless from the guest’s perspective). For physical Linux hosts, the lightweightironcore-backup-client package runs on the host itself. In both
cases only encrypted, deduplicated chunks travel to the Primary datastore. A
scheduled replication job mirrors weekly full backups to the Backup site for
long-term retention and disaster recovery.
Compliance and Retention
Daily Incremental — 7 Days
Daily incremental backups retained on the Primary DC site for 7 rolling days.
Restore any day within the past week to the exact point-in-time state.
Weekly Full — 3 Weeks
Weekly full backups retained on the Primary DC site for 3 rolling weeks. Used
as the base reference for subsequent incremental chains.
Weekly Archival — 52 Weeks
Weekly full backups replicated to the Backup site and retained for 52 rolling
weeks. Long-term archival for compliance and disaster recovery.
Mock Drill — Every 6 Months
Bi-annual recovery validation using backed-up data from the Backup site to
confirm recoverability end-to-end with zero impact on production.
Platform Coverage
Virtual Machines
Native integration with the Ironcore platform. Block-level change tracking on
running VMs with no shutdown required. Live-restore brings a VM online as the
restore continues in the background.
System Containers
Full and incremental backups of Ironcore system containers. Restore individual
files or rehydrate the entire container.
Physical Hosts
The backup client runs on most modern Linux distributions to protect physical
hosts, configuration files, and application data outside of the virtualization layer.
Object Storage Backend
Use S3-compatible object storage as the backup datastore for elastic capacity
and geographic redundancy.
Related Services
Polystack Compute
The compute service whose instances are protected by Ironcore Backup Solution.
Polystack Block Storage
Persistent volumes for compute instances. Volume snapshots complement IBS backups.
Instance High Availability
Automated host failure recovery. Pairs with IBS for full data and infrastructure
resilience.