> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.polystack.tech/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Ironcore Backup Solution

> Enterprise backup and recovery for virtual machines, containers, and physical hosts — incremental, deduplicated, encrypted, with cross-site replication and tape archival.

Protect every workload running on the Polystack platform with **Ironcore Backup Solution (IBS)** —
an enterprise-grade backup service built on Changed Block Tracking (CBT), client-side
encryption, deduplication, and cross-site replication. Recover an entire instance,
a single file, or a full disaster site without leaving the Dashboard.

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>Ironcore Backup Solution</p>

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="User Guide" icon="book-open" href="/services/ironcore-backup/user-guide" color="#bf9667">
    Create on-demand backups, schedule recurring jobs, browse snapshots, and restore
    full VMs or individual files using the Dashboard or CLI.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Admin Guide" icon="shield-check" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide" color="#bf9667">
    Provision datastores, configure retention policies, set up cross-site replication,
    integrate tape libraries, and harden access control.
  </Card>

  <Card title="CLI Reference" icon="terminal" href="/services/ironcore-backup/cli-reference" color="#bf9667">
    Full command reference for managing backup jobs, restore operations, datastores,
    verification, and replication from the command line.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Polystack Compute" icon="server" href="/services/compute" color="#bf9667">
    Compute service provides the instances that Ironcore Backup Solution protects
    using block-level change tracking and live-restore.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>Key Capabilities</p>

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Changed Block Tracking (CBT)" icon="copy" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/architecture" color="#bf9667">
    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.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Global Deduplication" icon="layers" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/architecture" color="#bf9667">
    Identical data blocks are stored once across all backup sources. Combined with
    Zstandard compression to minimise storage footprint.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Host-Side Encryption" icon="lock" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/security-encryption" color="#bf9667">
    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.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Cross-Site Replication" icon="arrow-left-right" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/replication-sync" color="#bf9667">
    Asynchronous near-real-time replication from the Primary DC site to the Backup
    site. Encrypted in transit with end-to-end integrity verification.
  </Card>

  <Card title="File-Level and VM-Level Restore" icon="rotate-ccw" href="/services/ironcore-backup/user-guide/restore-options" color="#bf9667">
    Restore a full VM in seconds with live-restore, or open a snapshot and download
    a single file, directory, or archive as ZIP.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Tape and Object Storage" icon="database" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/tape-and-object" color="#bf9667">
    Long-term archival to LTO-5 and newer tape libraries. Native support for
    S3-compatible object storage as a backup backend.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Verification and Mock Drills" icon="check" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/verification-validation" color="#bf9667">
    SHA-256 checksum verification on every backup. Schedule periodic verification
    jobs and bi-annual mock recovery drills.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Ransomware Protection" icon="shield" href="/services/ironcore-backup/admin-guide/security-encryption" color="#bf9667">
    Append-only datastores, immutable chunks, fine-grained access control, and
    off-site replication ensure recoverability when primary storage is compromised.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>How It Works</p>

```mermaid theme={null}
graph TD
    A[Ironcore Compute Instance] -->|Block-level change tracking| B[Backup Client]
    B -->|Encrypt + dedupe + compress| C[Primary Backup Datastore]
    C -->|Replicate weekly fulls| D[Backup Site Datastore]
    D -->|Long-term archival| E[Tape Library / Object Storage]
    C -->|SHA-256 verify| F[Verification Jobs]
    F -->|Anomaly detection| G[Notification System]
```

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
lightweight `ironcore-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.

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>Compliance and Retention</p>

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Daily Incremental — 7 Days" icon="calendar" color="#bf9667">
    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.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Weekly Full — 3 Weeks" icon="calendar-days" color="#bf9667">
    Weekly full backups retained on the Primary DC site for 3 rolling weeks. Used
    as the base reference for subsequent incremental chains.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Weekly Archival — 52 Weeks" icon="archive" color="#bf9667">
    Weekly full backups replicated to the Backup site and retained for 52 rolling
    weeks. Long-term archival for compliance and disaster recovery.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Mock Drill — Every 6 Months" icon="circle-check" color="#bf9667">
    Bi-annual recovery validation using backed-up data from the Backup site to
    confirm recoverability end-to-end with zero impact on production.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>Platform Coverage</p>

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Virtual Machines" icon="server" color="#bf9667">
    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.
  </Card>

  <Card title="System Containers" icon="box" color="#bf9667">
    Full and incremental backups of Ironcore system containers. Restore individual
    files or rehydrate the entire container.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Physical Hosts" icon="hard-drive" color="#bf9667">
    The backup client runs on most modern Linux distributions to protect physical
    hosts, configuration files, and application data outside of the virtualization layer.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Object Storage Backend" icon="cloud" color="#bf9667">
    Use S3-compatible object storage as the backup datastore for elastic capacity
    and geographic redundancy.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

***

<p style={{ fontSize: '1.25rem', fontWeight: 700, marginBottom: '0.75rem' }}>Related Services</p>

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Polystack Compute" icon="server" href="/services/compute" color="#bf9667">
    The compute service whose instances are protected by Ironcore Backup Solution.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Polystack Block Storage" icon="hard-drive" href="/services/storage/index" color="#bf9667">
    Persistent volumes for compute instances. Volume snapshots complement IBS backups.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Instance High Availability" icon="heart-pulse" href="/services/instance-ha" color="#bf9667">
    Automated host failure recovery. Pairs with IBS for full data and infrastructure
    resilience.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>