How Does Backup Work in AWS?
AWS supports multiple options for backing up cloud-based data and applications. One common method is using AWS Backup, a managed service that centralizes and automates data protection across AWS services. It supports services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, DynamoDB, and EFS.
However, AWS Backup is just one of several ways to implement backup strategies on AWS. Many organizations take a DIY approach, leveraging individual service features like Amazon EBS snapshots, S3 versioning, or RDS automated backups to create and manage their own backup workflows.
Alternatively, third-party tools like N2W Backup & Recovery can extend AWS’s native capabilities, offering improved functionality such as policy-based automation, cross-cloud backups, improved analytics, and advanced ransomware protection.
In this article:
- The Need for Backup in AWS
- 10 Key AWS Backup Best Practices
- Identify Critical Data and Resources
- Determine the Appropriate Backup Frequency and Retention Policies
- Define Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
- Map Resources to Backup Policies Systematically
- Use Cross-Region and Cross-Account Backups
- Consider AWS Storage Gateway for Hybrid Environments
- Enable AWS CloudTrail for Tracking Backup Operations
- Set Up AWS Config Rules to Ensure Compliance
- Analyze Storage Usage and Lifecycle Policies
- Consider Third-Party Backup Solutions
The Need for Backup in AWS
Backups are crucial for data protection and business continuity. In AWS, maintaining backups ensures that organizations can recover lost or corrupted data without significant downtime. This aids in preventing operational disruptions caused by accidental data deletion, software failures, or cyber threats such as ransomware attacks.
Having a solid backup strategy helps organizations meet compliance and regulatory requirements. Many industries, including healthcare, finance, and government sectors, must retain copies of data for specified periods to comply with legal and industry regulations.
Additionally, backing up resources can help optimize storage costs. Organizations can choose different storage classes for their backups, such as Amazon S3 Glacier for long-term archival storage at a lower cost. They can also set lifecycle policies to automatically move backups to cost-effective storage as they age, reducing expenses while maintaining data availability.
10 Key AWS Backup Best Practices
1. Identify Critical Data and Resources
Before setting up backups, determine which data, applications, and system components are most critical to business operations. Start by conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) to classify data based on its importance and recovery priority.
Some of the key AWS resources to consider for backups include:
- Databases: Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Aurora hold mission-critical data and require frequent backups.
- Compute instances: Amazon EC2 instances, including their attached Amazon EBS volumes, should be backed up to enable system recovery.
- Storage services: Amazon S3 buckets and Amazon EFS file systems contain business-critical files, logs, and application data.
- Configuration and infrastructure: AWS CloudFormation stacks, AWS Lambda functions, and IAM policies should be backed up to restore infrastructure settings quickly.
2. Determine the Appropriate Backup Frequency and Retention Policies
Backup schedules must be designed based on how often data changes and business continuity requirements. Some data, like transactional databases, require frequent backups, while static data can be backed up less frequently.
Consider the following guidelines:
- Frequent transactional data (e.g., Amazon RDS, DynamoDB): Hourly or continuous backups using point-in-time recovery.
- Business applications (e.g., EC2, EBS): Daily snapshots to capture system state.
- File storage (e.g., S3, EFS): Versioning and lifecycle policies for retention.
- Archive data (e.g., Logs, compliance records): Long-term retention in Amazon S3 Glacier.
Retention policies define how long backups should be kept before being archived or deleted. Compliance requirements often dictate retention periods (e.g., financial records may need to be retained for 7+ years).
✅ TIP: If you need to perform backups at a specific time or more frequently than every hour, you’ll want to use a tool like N2W, which has a 60-second backup interval.
3. Define Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO)
RTO and RPO are key factors in disaster recovery planning:
- RTO (recovery time objective): The maximum allowable downtime before the service must be restored.
- RPO (recovery point objective): The maximum acceptable data loss measured in time.
For example, if a business requires an RTO of 1 hour and an RPO of 15 minutes, backups must be taken at least every 15 minutes, and recovery processes should be optimized for fast restoration.
AWS’s native backup mechanisms address the following RTO and RPO needs:
- Low RTO & RPO: Amazon Aurora Global Database, AWS Backup with continuous backup for RDS.
- Moderate RTO & RPO: Daily EC2 and EBS snapshots, scheduled S3 backups.
- High RTO & RPO: Manual backups or long-term archives, suitable for regulatory storage needs.
Organizations should conduct regular disaster recovery drills to validate that their backup strategy aligns with their RTO/RPO objectives. (You can automate no-cost DR Drills with N2W.)
4. Map Resources to Backup Policies Systematically
To ensure consistent and reliable backups across the environment, resources should be mapped to backup policies in a structured and automated way. Manual assignment can lead to gaps in coverage or policy mismatches. Systematic mapping using tagging, templates, and centralized policies minimizes risk and simplifies backup management at scale.
Recommended actions include:
- Use resource tagging: Apply standardized AWS tags like Backup:Daily or Environment:Production to classify resources based on backup needs.
- Define backup plans with tag-based rules: Create AWS Backup plans that automatically include resources based on tag conditions, ensuring consistency and automation.
- Group resources by environment: Segment backups for dev, test, and production environments using dedicated backup plans for better isolation and control.
- Leverage AWS Organizations: Apply backup policies at the organizational level to enforce consistent rules across multiple accounts.
- Monitor coverage with AWS Config and AWS Backup Audit Manager: Validate that all tagged resources are included in appropriate backup plans and report any non-compliance.
5. Use Cross-Region and Cross-Account Backups
Storing backups in a separate region or account improves AWS disaster recovery by providing redundancy against regional failures, accidental deletions, or cyber threats.
Cross-region backups:
- Mitigates regional outages: Replicating backups to another region ensures data availability in case of regional AWS service disruptions.
- Compliance requirements: Some industries mandate off-site backups for regulatory compliance.
Cross-account backups:
- Enhanced security: Storing backups in a separate AWS account protects against accidental deletions or compromised credentials.
- Multi-tenancy protection: Organizations with multiple teams can isolate backups to prevent unauthorized modifications.
✅ TIP: Create an impenetrable DR vault by storing snapshots in a separate cloud—and making them immutable backups—which you can do with N2W.
6. Consider AWS Storage Gateway for Hybrid Environments
For organizations operating in hybrid cloud environments, AWS Storage Gateway provides backup integration between on-premises infrastructure and AWS. It enables organizations to extend their data protection strategy beyond AWS by securely storing backups in the cloud.
Key AWS Storage Gateway options for backups:
- File Gateway: Enables backing up on-premises file shares to Amazon S3, supporting S3 lifecycle policies for cost-effective storage management.
- Volume Gateway: Provides snapshots of on-premises volumes, storing them as Amazon EBS snapshots for disaster recovery.
- Tape Gateway: Emulates physical tape libraries, allowing organizations to archive backup data in Amazon S3 Glacier or Glacier Deep Archive for long-term retention.
By leveraging AWS Storage Gateway, organizations can ensure their on-premises data is securely backed up to AWS, reducing reliance on traditional backup hardware.
7. Enable AWS CloudTrail for Tracking Backup Operations
Monitoring backup operations is crucial for security, compliance, and troubleshooting. AWS CloudTrail records API activity across AWS services, including AWS Backup, and can also be configured to track third-party backup solutions. This helps organizations track backup creation, modification, and deletion events.
Best practices for CloudTrail in backup management:
- Enable CloudTrail logging: Capture all backup-related API calls, ensuring visibility into backup operations.
- Use Amazon CloudWatch for alerts: Set up alerts for failed or unauthorized backup changes.
- Analyze CloudTrail logs with AWS Athena: Query and analyze backup activities to detect anomalies or compliance violations.
By integrating CloudTrail with backup processes, organizations can ensure auditability, improve security, and quickly investigate backup failures or unauthorized access.
8. Set Up AWS Config Rules to Ensure Compliance
AWS Config provides continuous monitoring and assessment of AWS resource configurations, ensuring backup policies are enforced and remain compliant with industry regulations.
Key AWS Config rules for backup compliance:
- Ensure all EC2 instances have backups: Detect unprotected instances and enforce backup policies.
- Validate S3 bucket versioning and lifecycle policies: Ensure data retention aligns with compliance requirements.
- Monitor AWS Backup policies: Verify that backup plans cover critical resources and meet retention standards.
By implementing AWS Config rules, organizations can automate compliance checks, reducing the risk of data loss due to misconfigurations.
9. Analyze Storage Usage and Lifecycle Policies
Optimizing storage costs is essential for an efficient backup strategy. AWS provides tools to analyze storage usage and automate data lifecycle transitions.
Key cost-saving strategies:
- Enable Amazon S3 storage classes: Use Intelligent-Tiering, Standard-IA, or Glacier for cost-effective backup storage.
- Match backups to the most appropriate storage tiers: Store critical data that requires fast retrieval in the standard S3 tier, while moving archival data to cold storage tiers.
- Analyze AWS Cost Explorer data: Identify underutilized resources and adjust backup strategies accordingly.
By continuously analyzing backup storage and applying lifecycle policies, organizations can reduce AWS costs while maintaining data availability.
10. Consider Third-Party Backup Solutions
While AWS provides solid backup capabilities, third-party tools like N2W take things to the next level—think automation on autopilot, ransomware protection built like a vault, and full-stack recovery across clouds.
Why teams are switching to N2W:
- Cross-cloud support: Backup data to and from AWS, Azure, and Wasabi—no console-hopping required.
- Ransomware-proof backups: Immutable storage, encryption, and role-based access control keep your data untouchable.
- Granular backup policies: Need sub-hour RPO? With N2W, you can schedule backups down to the minute.
- Automated archiving: Slash storage costs with tiered backups to Glacier, Azure Blob, or Wasabi. Bonus: Trim down DR generations without sacrificing safety.
- Effortless DR testing: Automate disaster recovery drills and validate readiness with just a few clicks.
N2W: The Easier Way to Backup and Recover in AWS
- Recover entire workloads in minutes.
- Cut storage costs instantly with AnySnap Archiver.
- Meet compliance mandates—like this year’s DORA regulation—in record time.
- Activate immutability to ransomware-proof your data.
- Control it all—backups, restores, archiving—from a single console.
No scripts. No silos. Just complete control.
Wondering how to choose the right AWS backup tool?
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