Hello Ceetee.

Thank you for your question. I will be happy to answer your questions.

I understand your RPO requirements as 1 week, and that you are looking for the optimal solution to configure everything properly.

1. What type of backup to perform: file or image? I would say that in most cases, the most efficient way is to run both file and Image-based backups. File backup is mostly recommended for the data partitions (all, except the entire C:\ partition). You can also cover user data folders with File Backup (i.e., C:\Users\*) folders. The image-based backup covers the entire OS with all applications, so you can restore your computer to bare metal, so it's usually not recommended to run on any other partitions. This PDF with basic backup strategies may be useful for your question as well: https://www.msp360.com/download/basic-backup-strategies.pdf.

2. What type of cycle to use? Full backups usually take the majority of the storage space (both local and cloud). So it's definitely a good idea to run Incremental backups. The better question here will be - how often to run the backups. I would suggest running daily incremental backups and weekly or bi-weekly Full backups. But it also depends on your requirements for the retention policy (your last question). I would suggest having at least 1 month of retention. You've mentioned that you'd like to protect against some physical issues on the computer; however, such a configuration can also help you being a last resort in case of accidental file deletion (human factor), or even a cyber threat. If the storage space is quite limited, you can store the backups for 2 weeks. I usually don't recommend storing backups for a shorter period of time.
Here you can play with a retention policy simulator, to see how many restore points you may have with your backup plan, so you can also plan it accordingly: https://get.msp360.com/backup-simulator.

3. What storage level to use? This is an excellent question. I would definitely recommend following the 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule (https://www.msp360.com/resources/blog/3-2-1-1-0-backup-rule/), so you can have both local and cloud backup. For the short retention policy, it doesn't make sense to use cold tier, since it has a minimum retention period of 30\90 days. Which means that if you store your backups for a shorter period of time and delete them before the minimum retention period on the storage, you will pay for this deleted data in any way. In other words, you will pay for backups that you don't have anymore. So if you plan to keep your backups for 2 weeks, then a hot tier may be quite a good fit. If you plan to store the backups on a cloud for more than 1 month, you can consider other storage tiers. Please check this document illustrating the differences between various cloud storage providers and their nuances that you need to keep in mind: https://www.msp360.com/download/storage-providers-price-comparison.pdf

Please let me know if it helps or if you have any other questions. We are always happy to help.

Thanks for the detailed response - very helpful.

One area I'm still unclear on, is backing up an image of the system disk to Azure.

Lets say I want to keep a system-disk image in cloud that is updated on a weekly basis, for disaster recovery.

Obviously, there needs to be an initial full backup taken, and that will take a long time to run,

After that I suspect that block-level incrementals can be added, but for how long can/should you continue to do that, to avoid another full backup ? - monthly, yearly ?

Also, presumably you don't want a retention policy that could delete files that block-level incrementals might rely on... so does that mean don't delete ? or what ?

Ceetee, you are absolutely right that the very first backup is always a full one, which may take a long time to upload. However, with the next full backups, we use a Synthetic Full backup capability, which only uploads the changed parts of data from the computer and copies the files and objects from the previous backups (that are already in the cloud). So the size of that backup is the same as a full backup; however, since it uploads only a small amount of data from the endpoint, it runs quite fast and doesn't utilize your network.

In case you decide using Azure Hot tier, you can leverage Simple Schedule Mode (which is a Forever Forward Incremental under the hood), which always stores only 1 full backup on the storage and saves you up to 50% of storage usage compared to the Advanced Schedule option (which requires several full backups being stored on the cloud). Unfortunately, the Simple Schedule is available only with the hot tiers due to additional costs associated with Synthetic Full Backups. With an advanced schedule, you define how frequently you'd like the Full Backup to happen. As I mentioned in my previous message, if you prefer storing backups for at least 1 month, you can schedule full backups to happen once in 2 weeks.

Speaking about retention policy, our agent automatically deletes the block-level backups that are not required for restores anymore, so you don't need to control that process or do anything manually. Once you set the retention policy, everything will be handled fully automatically. Here you can read the article explaining how the retention policy works (this actually always is the most complicated question): https://mspbackups.com/AP/Help/backup/about/retention-policy.

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions, we are always happy to help.

Thanks for that, and sorry to ask more questions...

I'm using this as a backup of last resort, that I hopefully will never need to use, so planned on using Cold storage to minimize costs.

So if running an Image backup of the system drive, and just using weekly Full/Synthetic Backups, and recognizing that Cold storage requires a minimum retention of 90days to avoid deletion penalties, does that mean I should set the backup retention policy to also be 90days+ - or are those two things unrelated.

I suspect the link you provided may have the answer, but it required login credentials.