A system and method to receive, from a database service executing on a cloud infrastructure, information indicating metrics regarding backups for the database service, the information including at least an indication of an age of a last complete backup for the database service, an indication of a size of changed data since the last complete backup, and an indication of a number of data units changed since the last complete backup; determine a type of backup strategy to instruct the database service to perform based on the received information, the type of backup strategy being one of a complete backup of the database service, a delta backup of the database service, and no backup of the database service; and issue, in response to the determination, an instruction to the database service to execute the determined type of backup.