How does Amazon’s centrally managed backup system work?
Enterprises and businesses around the globe are always on the lookout for secure storage solutions for the long term. Some examples of such organizations are:
- Government agencies
- Financial institutions
- Healthcare service providers
Regulations compliance according to their business requirements is the primary necessity of such organizations. The data stored as a backup must be secure and immutable. One way of storing data in such a manner is to store data via a centralized immutable backup solution. Such a backup solution will create and store data in secure vault accounts.
Whether on-premise or cloud, you can’t rely on a single data source for all your business needs. You will suffer the most in any unlikely event of data corruption or hardware failure.
Although the cloud has all the fail-safe to deal with data corruption, remember that a cloud is just your data on a remote PC. As much as traditional infrastructure is susceptible to hardware failure, so it is on the cloud.
To cope with these pain points, AWS introduced a service known as AWS backup. Let’s dive deep and understand some of the core concepts of AWS backup.
What is AWS backup service?
AWS backup is a fully managed service that allows you to easily back up data across a wide range of AWS services and hybrid workloads using the AWS Storage Gateway. You can use AWS backup to centralize and automate the data backup processes using AWS resources like
- Amazon EBS volumes
- Amazon RDS databases
- Amazon DynamoDB tables
- Amazon EFS file systems
- AWS Storage Gateway volumes
AWS backup services were introduced in 2019. Prior to that, Amazon used to provide dedicated tools for tackling modern data challenges.
In 2019, Amazon decided to launch a dedicated service for data backup services and named it AWS backup. With the introduction of AWS backup, Amazon made a centralized management interface for all the technologies and tools used earlier so that you can orchestrate and schedule all your backups easily from one place.
With AWS Backup, you do not need to create custom scripts as the solution automates and consolidates the previously performed backup tasks.
According to Simform, AWS backup is considered a cost-effective and policy-based service that simplifies the data backup process and allows you to take scalable backups. By leveraging AWS backup, you can protect your system against malicious activities and ransomware attacks.
How to Instantiate Backup Using AWS Console
- In the AWS console, select Create Backup Plan and click on Build a New Plan
- Select a create a new backup rule to move data to cold storage after a month and delete 6 months old data.
- Click create a plan and then on assign resources to define the files that need to be backed up.
- Finally, go to the AWS backup dashboard and monitor your new backup job.
Use cases of AWS backup service
Amazon AWS backup is used in the following scenarios -
Hybrid cloud backup — Used to integrate local storage with AWS cloud using AWS Storage Gateway. In this service, your data is securely stored in one of the Amazon S3 storage tiers depending on your frequency of data access.
Database Backup — AWS backup service can help you if you want to back up your Amazon RDS and DynamoDB data. It can also be leveraged to back up self-hosted databases on an EC2 instance.
To make the process seamless, users can leverage automation for automating all these backups in one place.
Data lifecycle management — Amazon S3 provides cost-effective cold storage solutions for storing data that are less frequently used. Using Amazon’s backup service, you can automatically define lifecycle policies to move data to cheaper storage classes.
How does the AWS backup service work with AWS services?
Few of Amazon’s services offer their standalone backup service. For others, you need to configure the AWS backup service. Let’s understand in brief how AWS backup works with different AWS services.
- AWS backup with VMware
AWS backup is the centralized solution for data protection for on-premises virtual machines. To connect to the AWS Backup system, you download the AWS backup gateway on your VMs. This gateway connects to your VM management server to discover VMs, encrypt data, and transfer data to AWS backup.
2. AWS backup with DynamoDB
DynamoDB is a popular NoSQL database. Since its inception, AWS backup has always supported DynamoDB. It has introduced advanced features for DynamoDB, like — copying backups across AWS regions, tiering backups to cold storage, cost management using tags, etc.
3. AWS backup with FSx file systems
AWS backup supports FSx file systems. Amazon FSx provides fully managed third-party file systems with dedicated features for workloads. When integrated, AWS backup uses the built-in backup functionality of FSx file systems.
Using AWS backup grants you additional functionality, such as unlimited retention options and schedule backup functionality. In addition to this, AWS backup retains your backup file even after your source file is deleted. This protects against accidental deletion and malware attacks.
4. AWS backup with EC2
When backing up an EC2 instance with AWS backup, you have a plethora of features to help you with it. While backing up, AWS backup takes a snapshot of your root Amazon EBS storage, launch configuration, etc., to ease your life. Leveraging AWS backup, you can also schedule application-consistent backups, define lifecycle policies and organize restores.
AWS backup doesn’t backup the following:
- Elastic Interference accelerator configuration
- User data when the EC2 instance was launched
Conclusion
Data plays a crucial role in the success of any application. That’s why preserving it should be your prime focus. AWS backup service is one such service that can cater to your data backup needs.
I believe I have covered all the fundamental aspects one needs to know about AWS backup service. In case you are aware of anything that I might have missed, kindly convey the same in the comments section below.