# Policies

Policies allow you to group cloud instances in many ways. For example, based on the cloud features.

To create a new backup policy, please open the Backup SLAs tab under the Cloud section and click on ![](/files/Mlb1upu7zHwdXwKktEWc)the button on the right.

![](/files/l8wilj7BkR6swB8g81gi)

Now you should see the policy wizard with 8 main sections.

## General

Under this section you can set up:

* The policy name
* Switch on/off scheduled backups enabled
* Set the priority for tasks

## Auto-assignment

In this section, you can switch on/off automatic policy assignments to cloud service providers

![](/files/6m6fgVIGkdbFP3d4fSQW)

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note:** Go to the [Account auto-synchronization](broken://pages/chBEcFzdMBDSFTu9ZHGS) to learn how to synchronize Microsoft 365 accounts.
{% endhint %}

## Features

Here you can easily select features that will be backup according to policy.

![](/files/zhpJRV0INwCAH6bMcmhR)

## Users / Groups / Sites / Teams

These sections are used to select instances that will be protected in policy.

![](/files/NCXXadJh7v10mUcLYZHF)

## Rule

This section is used to select the backup destination.

![](/files/qq6o0Qw0TkXQk8j4FRP9)

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note:** You can use only [File System](/deployment/backup-destinations/filesystem/regular-filesystem.md), [Microsoft Azure Blob Storage](/deployment/backup-destinations/object-storage/microsoft-azure-blob-storage.md), [Micro Focus Data Protector](broken://pages/KVFMFC2O6SsuwbzKqIin) as a backup destination.
{% endhint %}

You can also set here **Retention** settings for your backups. You can use a number of days and versions to keep.

If you have already created a schedule, you can also select it or Create New Schedule.

## Retention

Storware Backup & Recovery handles retention for all backup destinations except NetBackup. There are 2 properties that define how long backup should be kept in the backup destination:

* `Retention - no. of versions to keep` - number of versions to keep
* `Retention - no. of days to keep` - number of days to keep

## Other

This is an optional section with two switches:

* Fail the rest of the backup tasks if more than xx% of the EXPORT tasks have already failed
* Fail the rest of the backup tasks if more than xx% of the STORE tasks have already failed

Two examples when using switches is useful It is very likely that if 30% of the backup tasks fail, the remaining tasks will also fail because the environment has failed. Or you are backing up a set of machines, and if even one is not secured, there is no point in backing up the rest.

In the end, save settings.

{% hint style="info" %}
There is no limit to the number of policies you can create.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="info" %}
**Note:** You can also perform the same action thanks to the CLI interface: [CLI Reference](/administration/cli-reference.md)
{% endhint %}


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