Your data is your responsibility, and a backup is the cheapest insurance there is. You have two layers: an optional managed backup add-on, and your own backups inside the VPS.
On any VPS you can add Off-Node Backup (weekly) for a small monthly fee. We take a weekly snapshot of your VPS and keep a copy on a different physical node, so a single-machine failure does not take your backup with it. It runs automatically once added; there is nothing to configure.
It is a weekly safety net, not continuous backup. For anything you cannot afford to lose between weekly runs, also keep your own backups.
pg_dump or mysqldump into a dated file, and copy the file off the server.tar or rsync the directories you care about to your own machine or to object storage.A backup you have never restored is a guess. Once in a while, restore a dump or an archive somewhere safe and confirm it actually works.
Straight answers.
A weekly snapshot of your VPS, stored on a different physical node so one machine failing does not lose the backup too.
No, it is weekly. For data that changes constantly, also run your own more frequent backups.
The control-plane and our own systems are backed up, but customer VPS backups are opt-in via the add-on, so you are in control of cost and scope.