Documentation

Schedules

Schedules tell hetsnap when to automatically create snapshots for your servers. Each schedule supports daily, weekly, and monthly backup frequencies — independently or in combination.

Creating a schedule

  1. Go to Schedules in the sidebar and click New Schedule.
  2. Give the schedule a descriptive name (e.g. Production Daily).
  3. Select one or more servers to back up.
  4. Configure the frequencies you want (see below).
  5. Click Create Schedule.

hetsnap evaluates active schedules every minute, so the first snapshot will be created at the next matching time.

Backup frequencies

Daily

Creates a snapshot once per day at the time you specify. Ideal for production servers where you want a recent restore point at all times.

  • Snapshot time — the UTC time hetsnap runs the backup (e.g. 02:00).
  • Retention — how many days to keep each snapshot before it is automatically deleted (1–365 days). Default: 7 days.

Weekly

Creates a snapshot on the days of the week you choose. Useful for longer-term restore points alongside daily backups.

  • Days — one or more weekdays (e.g. every Sunday).
  • Snapshot time — the UTC time to run the backup.
  • Retention — how many weeks to keep each snapshot (1–52 weeks). Default: 4 weeks.

Monthly

Creates a snapshot on the first or last day of each month. Good for compliance or long-term archiving.

  • Day — first or last day of the month.
  • Snapshot time — the UTC time to run the backup.
  • Retention — how many months to keep each snapshot (1–24 months). Default: 3 months.

Retention policies

When a snapshot is older than its retention period, hetsnap deletes it automatically from your Hetzner project. This keeps your storage costs predictable without any manual cleanup.

Example: A daily schedule with 7-day retention keeps exactly 7 daily snapshots per server at any given time. When an 8th snapshot is created, the oldest is deleted.

Combining frequencies

You can enable multiple frequencies on a single schedule. For example, a schedule with both daily (7-day retention) and weekly (4-week retention) active will create:

  • A daily snapshot every day, kept for 7 days.
  • A weekly snapshot every Sunday, kept for 4 weeks.

Each frequency is tracked independently — a weekly snapshot will not be deleted by the daily retention rule.

Assigning servers

A single schedule can cover multiple servers. Each server in the schedule gets its own snapshot — there is no shared snapshot across servers.

To add or remove servers from an existing schedule, open the schedule and click Edit.

Pausing or deleting a schedule

To stop automated backups, delete the schedule from the list. Existing snapshots are not affected — they remain in your Hetzner project until their retention date or until you delete them manually.