Creating your first backup job
A walkthrough of every field in the backup job creation form.
A backup job defines what to back up, where to store it, and when to run. You need at least one server or provider and one storage destination before creating a job.
Job types
- VPS Snapshot — creates a snapshot of a Droplet via the DigitalOcean API. No SSH required.
- Database — runs pg_dump, mysqldump or mongodump over SSH and uploads the result to storage.
- Docker — archives named Docker volumes and docker-compose files over SSH.
Schedule field
Pick a schedule from the dropdown: Manual, Every 5 minutes, Hourly, Every 12 hours, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. For Daily/Weekly/Monthly you also set a time of day and timezone. Raw cron expressions are available through the API for anything the dropdown doesn't cover.
How fast you can go depends on your plan: Free and Starter are daily, Standard adds every-12-hours, and Pro and Agency unlock every-5-minutes backups.
Retention
VPS Snaps tracks which backups belong to each job and automatically deletes old ones beyond your retention setting. The minimum is 1 day; the maximum depends on your plan.
Enabling and disabling
Newly created jobs are enabled by default. You can pause a job at any time from the Backup Jobs list without deleting it. Paused jobs don't run on schedule but can still be triggered manually.