As the data grows, protecting the data concerning availability and security becomes challenging. Many of the AWS services have their service level backups, i.e., Snapshot for EB, etc., but when it comes to Backup management for all services, tracking the progress and monitoring the backup processes becomes difficult.

Earlier this year, AWS announced the availability of Aws Backup as a “fully-managed centralized backup service.” AWS Backup achieves automated backups across a company’s various assets stored in AWS cloud, as well as on-premises. It also provides a centralized AWS Management Console via which organizations can manage their backup strategies.

The following are benefits of the cloud-native backup solution.

Centralized management of backups

The AWS Backup solution provides centralized backup management for all supported services. The backups for each function can be planned, tracked, and restored from a single pane of glass.

Policy-based backups

Sometimes backups could be performed outside of business hours. AWS Backup allows one to define the policies with a set of rules to manage backup schedules. Consequently, backup plans can be created and resources can be assigned accordingly. With the backup solution, one can define backup schedules, frequency and even lifecycle in the rules. The service also offers one to take the backups on-demand.

Automate the backup process

Once the policies are defined with rules, the backups can be performed automatically which frees the user from maintaining custom scripts or any other solution. The polices can be applied to the resources just by tagging the related resources, making the backup strategy easier.

Backup compliance

With a centralized backup solution, the user can enforce backup policy, encrypt backup data and audit backup activities to help meet backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup provides security by encrypting the data in transit and at rest. Furthermore, the consolidated backup activity logs help perform compliance audits.

AWS Backup also supports hybrid backups which help users enable backups for on-premise s datacenters as well as using AWS Storage Gateway.

How it works

The process is shown in the following figure:
1. Create a backup plan
2. Assign resources to the plan
3. Monitor the backup process
4. Restore the backup

Below is a step by step guide to enable cloud-native backups:

Create a backup plan:

1. Log in to the AWS Console and navigate to the Backup console. Click Create backup plan to get started.

2. On the Create Backup plan page, you can select either of the options as shown in the below image. Let’s start by choosing to Build a new plan.

3. On the same page, navigate to Backup rule configuration where you must define the backup frequency and retention policies as shown below:

As shown above, you can set the frequency, backup window and also manage the lifecycle of the backup by setting the transition and expiration. The default backup vault can be used, or you can create a new vault which will store data that is backed up.

4. The recovery points can be tagged as below, and the backup plan itself can be tagged.

Once the backup plan is created, it will be shown under Backup Plans. The resources can only be added once the backup plan is designed.

5. On the above page, navigate to Resource assignments and click Assign resources to add resources to the backup plan. This provides a way to combine resources either by using the Tags or the Resource ID. For the demo, let’s go with the Resource ID for EBS as shown in the figure. Using the Tags, all resources that needs to be part of the backup plan should be tagged, the same tag can be specified here, so that the backup runs on the resources matched with the specified tag.

6. Once the resource is assigned, it takes some time for the Job to get started. Navigate back to the dashboard to check the active Jobs.

Create On-Demand Backup:

Start by choosing to Create an on-demand backup that provides the options shown below.

This creates backup on-demand, and the related Job can be tracked from Jobs.

When you click the Job, it shows the Restore point ARN as below which can be used to restore data.

On the dashboard, it will show the overall jobs status, i.e., Backups and you can restore them as shown below:

Restore a backup:

1. On the AWS Backup console, choose to Restore the backup to start the restoration of backed up EBS volume.

2. Click on the Resource ID to see the recovery points available as shown below:

3. Select the recovery point and click the Restore button which will start the restore process. The restore job can be tracked under the Restore jobs tab of the AWS Backup Jobs.