Schedule Backup Jobs

Overview

A backup job runs the same backup automatically on a schedule. Define which workloads to back up, when to run, and how long to keep each generation. The standard pattern for production workloads is daily incremental + weekly full with the daily run feeding the weekly chain. This page covers creating a job, the retention window syntax, and tuning the schedule for compliance windows.

Prerequisites

An active Polystack account with project membership
A datastore your project can write to
Workloads identified for protection

Recommended Retention Pattern

The pattern below satisfies the standard compliance retention model: 7 days of daily incrementals on the Primary DC, 3 weeks of weekly fulls on the Primary DC, and 52 weeks of weekly archival fulls on the Backup site.

Daily Incremental

Schedule: 02:00 daily — Retention: keep-daily=7 — Target: Primary DC datastore. Only changed blocks are uploaded; runs complete in minutes for most workloads.

Weekly Full

Schedule: Sunday 03:00 — Retention: keep-weekly=3 — Target: Primary DC datastore. Forms the base of the next incremental chain.

Weekly Archival

Schedule: Sunday 04:30 — Retention: keep-weekly=52 — Target: Backup site datastore. Replicated from Primary DC by a sync job (administrator).

Create a Daily Incremental Job

Dashboard
CLI

Open Jobs

Navigate to Backup Solution > Jobs.

Click Create

Click Create Backup Job.

Name the job

Enter a descriptive Name, for example daily-prod-incr.

Select sources

Add the workloads to back up. Use the Include and Exclude filters to scope by name, tag, or project.

Choose datastore and namespace

Select the target datastore and, optionally, a namespace.

Set the schedule

Set Schedule to 02:00. The schedule field accepts systemd-style expressions — see the syntax table below.

Configure retention

Open the Retention section and set keep-daily=7. The Prune Simulator preview shows which generations the job would keep.

Enable notifications

Add the project notification group. The job sends success and failure alerts to the configured recipients.

Save

Click Save.

The job appears in the Jobs list. Next run time is shown in the schedule column.

Create a daily incremental backup job

ironcore-backup job create \
  --name daily-prod-incr \
  --schedule "02:00" \
  --type vm \
  --source-id 12345,12346,12347 \
  --repository ibs-primary \
  --namespace production \
  --retention keep-daily=7 \
  --notification-mode always

The job is listed under ironcore-backup job list and will run at the next scheduled time.

Create a Weekly Full Job

Dashboard
CLI

Use the same flow as the daily job, with these differences:

Field	Value
Name	`weekly-prod-full`
Schedule	`Sun 03:00`
Mode	Full
Retention	`keep-weekly=3`

Create a weekly full backup job

ironcore-backup job create \
  --name weekly-prod-full \
  --schedule "Sun 03:00" \
  --type vm \
  --source-id 12345,12346,12347 \
  --repository ibs-primary \
  --namespace production \
  --mode full \
  --retention keep-weekly=3 \
  --notification-mode always

Schedule Syntax

Schedules use a calendar event syntax similar to systemd OnCalendar.

Expression	Meaning
`02:00`	Every day at 02:00
`--* 02:00`	Every day at 02:00 (explicit form)
`Mon..Fri 18:00`	Every weekday at 18:00
`Sun 03:00`	Every Sunday at 03:00
`--01 03:00`	The first day of every month at 03:00
`hourly`	Every hour, top of the hour
`daily`	Every day at midnight
`weekly`	Every Monday at midnight

Stagger schedules so that high-IO jobs do not collide. For example, daily incrementals at 02:00, weekly fulls at 03:00, archival sync at 04:30, verification at 05:00.

Retention Windows

Window	Behaviour
`keep-last=N`	Keep the N most recent snapshots regardless of age
`keep-hourly=N`	Keep the most recent snapshot for each of the last N hours
`keep-daily=N`	Keep the most recent snapshot for each of the last N days
`keep-weekly=N`	Keep the most recent snapshot for each of the last N weeks
`keep-monthly=N`	Keep the most recent snapshot for each of the last N months
`keep-yearly=N`	Keep the most recent snapshot for each of the last N years

Multiple windows can combine. For example, keep-daily=7, keep-weekly=4, keep-monthly=12 retains the last 7 days, plus one snapshot per week for 4 weeks, plus one snapshot per month for 12 months — using the same underlying chunks through deduplication.

Removing a retention window does not delete historical snapshots immediately — pruning happens during the next prune pass. Run the Prune Simulator before changing windows to preview the impact.

Trigger a Job Manually

Dashboard
CLI

From Jobs, select the job and click Run Now. The schedule resumes afterward — the manual run does not skip the next scheduled run.

ironcore-backup job run --name daily-prod-incr

Job Notifications

Configure notification mode to control alerting volume:

Mode	Sends notification when
`always`	Every run (success and failure)
`errors`	Only when the run fails
`never`	No notifications

Project administrators can attach a notification group to each job. Notification groups dispatch to email, webhooks, or external metric servers — see Notifications.

Overview

Recommended Retention Pattern

Daily Incremental

Weekly Full

Weekly Archival

Create a Daily Incremental Job

Open Jobs

Click Create

Name the job

Select sources

Choose datastore and namespace

Set the schedule

Configure retention

Enable notifications

Save

Create a Weekly Full Job

Schedule Syntax

Retention Windows

Trigger a Job Manually

Job Notifications

Job Lifecycle

Next Steps

Monitoring Jobs

Restore Options

Retention Policies

Replication and Sync

​Overview

​Recommended Retention Pattern

Daily Incremental

Weekly Full

Weekly Archival

​Create a Daily Incremental Job

Open Jobs

Click Create

Name the job

Select sources

Choose datastore and namespace

Set the schedule

Configure retention

Enable notifications

Save

​Create a Weekly Full Job

​Schedule Syntax

​Retention Windows

​Trigger a Job Manually

​Job Notifications

​Job Lifecycle

​Next Steps

Monitoring Jobs

Restore Options

Retention Policies

Replication and Sync

Overview

Recommended Retention Pattern

Create a Daily Incremental Job

Create a Weekly Full Job

Schedule Syntax

Retention Windows

Trigger a Job Manually

Job Notifications

Job Lifecycle

Next Steps