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AWS Backup & Disaster Recovery — Centralized data protection
AWS Backup provides a centralized way to automate and centrally manage backups across AWS services.
What it is
- AWS Backup is a fully-managed backup service that automates backups across AWS services such as EFS, RDS, DynamoDB, and EC2.
- It provides centralized backup management and compliance reporting.
When I reach for it
- When you need to automate backups across multiple AWS services.
- To meet compliance requirements for data retention and recovery.
- For disaster recovery planning to ensure data availability.
Key architectural decisions
- Choose the right backup frequency (e.g., daily, weekly) based on RPO needs.
- Determine backup retention policies to balance cost and compliance.
- Select AWS services to integrate with AWS Backup (e.g., EBS snapshots, RDS backups).
Gotchas & exam traps
- AWS Backup does not support all AWS services; check the service limits and compatibility.
- Be aware of costs associated with storage and data transfer for backups.
- Backup vaults can have policies that restrict access; ensure IAM roles are configured correctly.
The architect view
- Adopt a multi-region backup strategy for enhanced disaster recovery.
- Use lifecycle policies to transition backups to lower-cost storage classes (S3 Glacier).
- Regularly test recovery processes to validate the integrity and accessibility of backups.