Amazon launches AWS Backup, for when snapshots just aren’t enough

Amazon launches AWS Backup, for when snapshots just aren’t enough

AWS has launched a Backup service, which might surprise you if you’d assumed the applications and data you’ve already got running on the cloud giant are in no danger of disappearing in a puff of smoke.

The cloud infrastructure cum retail warehouse is pitching AWS Backup as “a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources [customer] backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in one place.”

It’s not that you were necessarily in danger of losing your data if you were using AWS before. As chief evangelist Jeff Barr’s blog announcing the service puts it, “you can build your own backup tools using the built-in snapshot operations built in to many of the [AWS] services.”

But, he continues, “creating an enterprise wide backup strategy and the tools to implement it still takes a lot of work.” Unless you choose to hand it over to AWS of course.

More specifically, with AWS Backup the vendor seems to be highlighting “business and regulatory compliance requirements, and you definitely want to make sure that you are protected against application errors.”

Barr’s post said the new service combined “existing AWS snapshot operations and new, purpose-built backup operations” to handle ”EBS volumes, EFS file systems, RDS & Aurora databases, DynamoDB tables, and Storage Gateway volumes”. The default target is Amazon’s S3 while older backups can be tiered to Amazon Glacier.

Backups are grouped into vaults, each encrypted by a KMS key. The service is PCI and ISO compliant as well as HIPAA eligible.

The service is being pitched at hybrid and on-prem installations.

According to Barr, AWS Backups work “within the scope of a particular AWS Region” with cross region functionality slated for later this year.

Bill Vass, VP of Storage, Automation, and Management Services, AWS, said in a canned statement that it was targeting builders who are willing to trade off granularity and “told us that they want one place to go for backups versus having to do it across multiple, individual services.”

Interestingly, the launch of AWS BackUp comes just a week after Amazon sucked up Israeli continuous backup, migration and disaster recoveriy outfit, CloudEndure. It seems reasonable to assume this buy will have more influence on future AWS BackUp features. CloudEndure lists its partnerships with AWS on its website, alongside Google, Azure and more. For now anyway.

Amazon this week also snapped up cloud resource manager TSO Logic. The firm’s service is designed to deliver “delivers accurate data-driven recommendations to right-size and right-cost compute—across public and private cloud.” That mission statement may need editing before too long.