Many backup and recovery tools provided from AWS

  • EC2 does not backup data by default.
  • Automating the process to run at regular, predetermined intervals is essential.
  • Many strategies available, decide amongst
    • Snapshots Vs. AMI
    • In-House Scripting Vs. Third-Party EC2 Backup Solution

EBS Snapshots

  • Create snapshots if EC2 instances are stored via EBS.
  • method use Amazon S3, which is natively API-based
  • Snapshots are backups of Amazon EBS volumes redundantly stored by Amazon S3.
  • At first, an exact copy of volume is created.
  • Subsequent snapshots will only capture incremental block-level changes of original.
  • Hence, quick, efficient means for backing up and restoring data.
  • Snapshot copies can be copied to other AWS region, for disaster recovery.
  • Extra copy in another region, can prevent complete data loss during a failure.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

  • AMI provides information required to launch an EC2 instance.
  • Specify an AMI during launching an instance
  • Launch as many instances from AMI per requirement
  • method use Amazon S3, which is natively API-based
  • AMI is an encrypted machine image
  • Contains all information necessary to restore data,
  • Also has a template for root volume for instance
  • Template has details on
    • the operating system
    • application server
    • applications
    • launch permissions, etc.
  • instance store-based AMIs against EBS, are
    • slower
    • less flexible
    • more costly

In-House Scripting

  • User can leverage existing scripts being used in organization
  • AWS provides option to process and automate backup process using their in-house scripting.
  • Helps in automating the backup process.
  • can also prove to be expensive and time-consuming
  • can become a laborious and time-consuming process if scaling up data.

Third-Party EC2 Backup Solutions

  • provide centralized backup management system
  • easily implement and manage EC2 backup
  • Can schedule backups, manage retention and recover data
  • Can also easily scale with data
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