One example method includes discovering an application topology, discovering relationships between microservices that are elements of the application topology, ranking the microservices, identifying one or more of the microservices as a persistency microservice, selecting one or more persistency microservices for backup, and defining a backup policy based on the microservice relationships, the microservice rankings, and the selected persistent microservices. A backup operation is then performed that includes backing up persistent data and/or persistent metadata generated and/or modified by one or more of the persistency microservices.