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EBS Snapshots: Optimizing RPO with N2WS and dynamic scheduling

illustration of a cloud against an orange gradient background to represent ec2 backup and ebs snapshots
In an EC2 backup solution based on EBS snapshots, balancing the number and frequency of snapshots vs the need for the best RPO can be tricky.
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When it comes to an AWS EBS snapshot, balancing the number and frequency with the need for the best recovery point objective (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 EBS Snapshot costs and numbers. 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:

  1. Backup every 10 minutes, backup disabled between 06:00PM – 08:00AM every day. No backup at all on weekends
  2. Backup every hour, backup disabled between 08:00AM – 06:00PM every day. No backup at all on weekends
  3. Backup once a day, backup performed only on Saturday and Sunday
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling sched1 definition
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling sched1 disabled time
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling sched2 definition
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling sched2 disabled time
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling sched3 definition
CPM EBS snapshots dynamic scheduling policy definition

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 EBS snapshots during off-hours. Try N2WS Backup & Recovery for FREE!

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