EBS snapshots, balancing the number and frequency of snapshots vs the need for the best RPO can be tricky. At peak hours data typically change at a much more rapid rate than during off-hours or weekends. The ability to make that distinction can save in terms of cost and the number of EBS snapshots. N2WS Backup & Recovery allows such flexibility out of the box. As an example, let’s try to define the following elaborate scheduling:
- Weekdays 08:00AM – 06:00PM – backup every 10 minutes
- Weekdays 06:00PM – 08:00AM – backup every hour
- Weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) – once a day
To do this, we will associate our N2WS backup policy (named “main_prod “) with three different N2WS schedule objects:
- Backup every 10 minutes, backup disabled between 06:00PM – 08:00AM every day. No backup at all on weekends
- Backup every hour, backup disabled between 08:00AM – 06:00PM every day. No backup at all on weekends
- Backup once a day, backup performed only on Saturday and Sunday
First schedule definition: 
As you can see, the backup is set for every 10 minutes starting 8:00AM. Backup is not performed on Saturdays & Sundays. For this schedule object, we define that it is disabled during nights by clicking “Configure” on the “Disabled Times in Day” column in the schedules tab and defining the following: 
Second schedule: 
This schedule starts a backup every hour, and, again, is not performed on Saturdays & Sundays. Its disabled times are the reverse of the first schedule: 
Now for the last schedule: 
This schedule does not need any disabled times, because it will work only on Saturdays & Sundays. So, now we need to simply associate all three schedules to the main_prod policy: 
This fairly simple configuration allows fine-tuning backup scheduling in a way that supports the required RPO at required times, without creating an excessive number snapshots during off-hours. Try N2WS Backup & Recovery for FREE!
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