Centrally Managed AWS Backup for Amazon Cloud

Many businesses utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS) to back up their local and cloud-based resources. AWS Backup is a brand-new Amazon service that centrally manages backups for both on-premises and cloud-based resources throughout the company.

We'll describe AWS Backup's functionality, use cases, and price in this post, as well as how NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP may help you enhance and optimize AWS backups.

This article is a part of a lengthy collection of data breaches.

What is AWS Backup?

AWS backup can indicate one of two things:

  • data backup for cloud services operating on AWS (cloud to cloud)
  • using AWS to archive and backup data from on-premises resources (on-premise to cloud)

AWS has provided tools for each of these situations for many years. For instance, you may utilize AWS Storage Gateway to backup data from local storage devices to Amazon S3 or automate EBS snapshots to backup local storage for an EC2 instance.

But in 2019, Amazon went a step further and introduced a specialized service called AWS Backup that enables you to automate and centrally manage backups throughout the company.

Both of the aforementioned scenarios are supported by AWS Backup, which allows you to backup data from Amazon EFS, DynamoDB, RDS, or EBS as well as from on-premise resources via the AWS Storage Gateway.

The earlier backup mechanisms made available by AWS are not replaced by AWS Backup. These technologies are combined through a common administration interface that makes it simple to coordinate and schedule backups in one location.

How Does the New AWS Backup Service Work?

The following ideas serve as the foundation of AWS Backup:

  • Backup rules—The schedule, frequency, and backup window are all specified in these rules, which constitute a backup. A backup rule may be applied to a single resource or to a set of resources that have been grouped together by tags.
  • Lifecycle rules—specify what happens to outdated backups. For instance, after a predetermined amount of time, lifecycle rules can be used to destroy backups entirely or shift them to a lower storage tier.
  • Vaults—Each vault that contains backups is encrypted with a Key Management Service (KMS) key.
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You may create a new backup in AWS Backup by using the AWS Console or programmatically by using a JSON file.

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The AWS Console's Backup Definition Guide

To develop a fresh backup strategy, adhere to the steps below.

1. Select Build a New Plan under Create Backup Plan in AWS.

2. Click Create a new backup rule; the backup example that runs every day, transfers data to cold storage after a month, and deletes it after six months is shown below.

3. Select What Should Be Backed Up Using This Rule by clicking Create Plan, seeing your plan, and then clicking Assign Resources. To provide AWS Backup access to all of the resources you want to back up, you must specify IAM roles.

4. Pick the resources you wish to include in the backup plan. An example of backing up an EFS folder, a DynamoDB table, an EBS disk, and all data resources identified by a tag value is shown below.

5. Check your new backup job on the AWS Backup Dashboard. You can view the status of the backup and restoration jobs that have been running.

We simply covered the bare minimum of AWS Backup's features; for more information, consult the official documentation.

AWS Backup Use Cases

AWS Backup and the underpinning Amazon backup technologies it controls are used in a handful of the common use cases listed below.

Hybrid Cloud Backup

Local storage resources may be integrated with the Amazon cloud via the AWS Storage Gateway. Data is immediately transferred back from Amazon to your on-premise storage devices when you restore from a backup. Depending on how frequently or rapidly you require access to the data, it is kept in one of the Amazon S3 storage tiers.

You may automate this procedure using AWS Backup, which generates a backup plan that specifies a timetable and frequency for backups from on-premises storage to S3.

Database Backup

You can use Amazon RDS and DynamoDB's built-in backup features to backup AWS's cloud-based database services. EBS snapshot automation may be used to backup self-hosted databases that are stored in EBS volumes and operate on Amazon EC2 instances.

You may define one or more backup plans, specify the databases or group of databases you need to backup, and automate all these backups in one location using AWS Backup. AWS backup now performs this automatically, eliminating the need for you to schedule EBS snapshots, establish special backup settings in RDS or DynamoDB, etc.

Data Lifecycle Management

You may migrate data that is used less frequently to more affordable cold storage thanks to Amazon S3's various storage levels. In S3, you can build up lifecycle rules that, depending on predetermined criteria, automatically shift data sets to a less expensive storage class or remove them entirely.

You may perform this centrally using AWS Backup as part of a backup strategy. You may specify when you establish backups what happens to your backups after a number of weeks, months, or years—you can automatically define an S3 lifecycle policy to transfer the data to cold storage or destroy it when it is no longer required.

The cost of AWS Backup depends on how much storage space your backups use. When you perform a backup of a data resource for the first time, you are charged for the entire storage space; however, after that, you are only charged for the storage space that has been added since the last backup.

AWS Backup Pricing

Backup Pricing

The following fees apply if you backup an AWS-based data resource (prices are for the US East Region and are subject to change). For further information, please see the official pricing page.

  • Amazon EFS File System Backup—$0.05 per GB/month
  • $10 per month for either an Amazon EBS Volume Snapshot or an AWS Storage Gateway Volume Backup.
  • Amazon RDS Database Snapshot—$0.095 per GB/Month
  • Amazon DynamoDB Table Backup—$0.10 per GB/Month

The pricing shown above are for heated storage. Only cold storage is supported by AWS Backup for Amazon EFS backups, and it costs just $0.01 per GB per month.

Restore Pricing

EBS, RDS, and Storage Gateway all offer free backup restoration services. Backup restoration costs apply to the following services (price is for the US East Region and is subject to change at any time):

  • Amazon EFS—Warm storage costs $0.02 per GB, whereas cold storage costs $0.03.
  • Amazon DynamoDB—$0.15 per GB

AWS Backup with Cloud Backup

Because NetApp is the company that truly knows ONTAP, NetApp Cloud Backup is the finest backup option for ONTAP systems. Cloud Backup automatically generates block-level incremental eternal backups since it was created by NetApp exclusively for ONTAP. These copies are kept in object format and maintain the full storage efficiency of ONTAP. Compared to competing solutions, your backups are 100X quicker to produce, far simpler to recover, and considerably more trustworthy.

The entire backup procedure is made simpler with cloud backup. It can be controlled from the same console as the rest of the NetApp cloud ecosystem and is straightforward, quick to deploy, and easy to use. Cloud Backup is the finest backup solution for ONTAP, whether you're searching for a less expensive means to store your backups, a quicker, more powerful technology than NDMP, or a simple way to implement a 3-2-1 approach.

Learn More About AWS Backup

For many enterprises, AWS backup is a significant financial outlay and a significant operational headache. Learn how to manage your expenses, automate backups, and use NetApp technology to implement hybrid cloud solutions and achieve significant storage economies by reading our other articles below.

AWS Backup Pricing

The cost of AWS backups depends on how much storage space you use for backups and how much data you need to recover at any one time.

With two storage tiers for backup data—warm storage and cold storage—data storage is charged per GB-month. Additionally, depending on the transfer location, Amazon charges every GB that is transferred out of storage.

Automating Your Disk Backup and Data Archive: Backup of an AWS Database Using AWS Snapshots

For many workloads, including AWS database backups, AWS snapshots are crucial for data preservation. Creating development and testing environments, repairing corrupted data, resolving user mistakes, and recovering from cyberattacks are just a few more uses for these snapshots.

Whether your architecture is cloud-only or hybrid, there are a number of techniques to guarantee that your AWS database backup is secure and usable. For instance, to increase availability, you may store backups redundantly across Regions and Availability Zones and employ both file-based and snapshot-based backups.

Data archiving and disk backup automation with Cloud Volumes ONTAP

It is simple to link cloud-based systems with on-premises systems thanks to the seamless integration of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP with on-premises NetApp storage. You can take rapid, space-saving application-consistent snapshots of a database of any size if it uses iSCSI storage allocations from a NetApp machine.

Snapshots of Cloud Volumes ONTAP made with SnapMirror® data replication. Enterprise data replication solution from NetApp, SnapMirror, has the ability to quickly synchronize huge amounts of data for applications like cloud migration and disaster recovery. SnapMirror was quick and effective after the initial snapshot since it only duplicated blocks that had changed.

EBS to S3: Streamlining Data on AWS

While the ability to instantly provide a limitless amount of resources through the cloud has transformed IT, this feature is not without its limitations. What transpires in installations at the corporate level when data accumulates and resource utilization rises over time, both for the core deployment and for the AWS backup copies? The solution is a charge that increases month after month. How can you reduce these costs?

In this blog article, we'll introduce you to one possible solution: moving data from EBS to S3, where storage costs are significantly lower, particularly for backup copies that are only sometimes needed.

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