Scheduling
Flexible scheduling for your backups
Scheduling a backup allows you to define when the backup has to run:
- On demand: This won't schedule anything but will allow you to trigger the backup manually or using our API.
- Hourly: Once a day at 0:00 AM
- Twice-Daily: Twice a day at 0:00 AM and 12:00 PM
- Daily: Every day at 0:00 AM
- Weekly: Every Sunday at 0:00 AM
- Monthly: Every first Sunday of the month at 0:00 AM
- Custom: Use this option if you want to create your scheduling with more options or using plain CRON expression. Example of CRON schedule for "20:00 every Tuesday" =
0 22 * * 2
Multi-scheduling
With our “multi-schedule” you can you define multiple schedules for a single backup, but you can also specify how many copies of each scheduled backup you want to retain. This allows you to tailor your backup strategy to your specific needs.
For example, your backup strategy might include:
- Daily Backup: Run a daily backup at 11 PM and keep 7 copies. This ensures that you have a week's worth of daily backups, providing multiple recent recovery points.
- Weekly Backup: Run a weekly backup every Sunday at 3 AM and keep 4 copies. This setup provides a month’s worth of weekly backups, offering broader coverage and a safeguard against longer-term data issues.
- Monthly Backup: Run a monthly backup on 1st of each month at 6 AM and keep 12 copies. This strategy ensures that you have 12 months of historical data, which is crucial for long-term data retention policies and regulatory compliance.
Additionally, a built-in collision detection system prevents conflicts when schedules overlap, ensuring stable and resource-efficient backups.
How to configure your backups schedules:
- Access Backup Creation: Start by navigating to the "Create Backup" section of your Simple Backups account.
- Choose Server and Database: Configure the necessary details for your backup job.
- Scroll to "Finalize and Create": After configuring the details, scroll to the "Finalize and create" section.
- Locate "When do you want to run your backup?": Find the scheduling section.
- Understand Existing Schedules:
- You'll see existing default schedules (e.g., daily, weekly).
- Adding Additional Schedules:
- Click the "+" button next to an existing schedule row.
- This will create a new schedule row.
- You can have up to four different schedules per backup job.
- Configuring Each Schedule:
- Schedule Type: For each new schedule, you'll have options for:
- On-demand: Run the backup only when manually triggered.
- Hourly: Set backups to run hourly.
- Daily: Set backups to run daily at a specific time.
- Weekly: Set backups to run weekly.
- Monthly: Set backups to run monthly.
- Custom: Create a custom schedule using a cron expression, offering precise control over frequency.
- Retention: Choose the number of schedule runs to retain the backup.
- Custom Cron Schedules (optional):
- If selecting "Custom," click on the option in the modal to enter a cron expression
- Familiarize yourself with cron syntax to create the desired schedule.
- Click "Save" to save the cron expression schedule.
Collision Detection System:
If two schedules would trigger the same backup simultaneously (e.g., a daily and weekly schedule overlapping), SimpleBackups will ensure only one process runs at a time. The system then creates a clean copy and saves it as a separate “version” without duplication, conserving resources and avoiding backup conflicts.
Tip: Review your schedules periodically to ensure they align with your data protection needs. The collision detection system handles overlaps smoothly, but clear scheduling will help maintain consistent backup practices.
Last updated on August 4, 2021