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Autopilot Standard
This page provides an overview of automatic backup creation and deletion. It details backup scheduling methods, Recovery Point Objective (RPO) risk levels, and backup deletion policies.
Automatic backup creationBackup for GKE provides two backup scheduling methods to automatically create backups:
When creating a backup plan, you can select either scheduling method.
Smart schedulingSmart scheduling automatically creates backups when needed to satisfy an RPO you set. Smart scheduling accommodates exclusion windows to prevent backups from running during peak usage periods. Smart scheduling automatically retries failed backups.
To enable smart scheduling in your backup plan, follow these steps:
For instructions to create a backup plan with smart scheduling, see Create a backup plan.
Backup exclusion windowYou can configure exclusion windows to prevent backups from running during specific time periods. Backup jobs are scheduled to start and finish outside the window duration as much as possible, but ongoing jobs won't be canceled if an exclusion window begins when jobs are in progress. You can configure an exclusion window as a single occurrence, daily, or weekly. You can configure multiple single occurrence windows but only one daily or weekly recurring window.
For example, if you don't want backups from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM every day, you can set a daily exclusion window with a start time of 5:00 PM and one hour duration.
For instructions to configure backup exclusion window to smart scheduling, see Create a backup plan.
Cron schedulingCron scheduling automatically creates backups according to a time schedule you define using the standard cron syntax. For example, 10 3 * * * creates a backup at 3:10 AM every day. The minimum interval between scheduled backups is 10 minutes. The cron scheduler doesn't automatically retry backups in case of failure.
For instructions to create a backup plan with cron scheduling, see Create a backup plan.
Comparison between smart scheduling and cron schedulingThe following table summarizes the comparison between smart scheduling and cron scheduling methods.
Feature Smart scheduling Cron scheduling Input Target RPO and backup exclusion window. Cron syntax RPO managementEvery backup plan, regardless of its backup scheduling method, has a dynamically calculated RPO risk level after it has at least four successful backups. If a backup plan violates RPO, or is at risk of violating it in the near future, then the RPO is at risk for the plan.
The RPO risk level is calculated from the backup creation scheduling configuration and the backup history of the backup plan. There are five risk levels: None, Low, Medium, High, and Critical. Each backup plan also has an RPO risk message that explains why the backup plan is at a particular risk level and provides advice for reducing risks.
The following table describes each RPO risk level.
RPO risk level Description None Meeting RPO with no risk. Low Meeting RPO but with a very mild risk of not meeting RPO soon. No immediate action is required. Continue to monitor the status. Medium Meeting RPO but with some risk of not meeting RPO soon. Action is required. High Meeting RPO but with more than one risks of not meeting RPO soon. Action is required. Critical Violating RPO. Immediate action is required.Backup plans with the same risk level may have different RPO risk messages depending on the scheduling configuration and historical backup data points. For example, the message for a medium risk level plan can be: Recent backups are taking longer. If this trend continues, there is a risk the RPO will no longer be met.
Automatic backup deletionYou can configure retention policy in a backup plan to automatically delete backups after a period of time. The retention policy is required for backup plans that include automatic backup creation. You can configure automatic backup deletion using the parameter backup_retain_days in the backup plan retention policy. The maximum retain time is 365 days.
When configuring a retention policy for a backup plan that uses automatic backup creation methods, consider the following limitations:
For instructions to create a backup plan with retention policy, see Create a backup plan.
What's nextExcept as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC.
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