Announcing point-and-click copy of Amazon RDS DB Snapshots across AWS Regions
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of DB Snapshot Copy, a new cross-region copy feature for Amazon RDS DB snapshots for all the supported database engines – MySQL, Oracle and SQL Server. This feature enables you to copy your databases across AWS regions using a few clicks on the AWS Management Console or a single API call, making it easier for you to leverage multiple AWS regions for use cases such as geographical expansion, data center migration and disaster recovery.
DB Snapshot Copy is very easy to use. To get started, navigate to the Amazon RDS page of the AWS Management Console, simply select the DB Snapshot to be copied, set the destination AWS Region, and start the copy. The copied DB snapshots behave exactly the same as existing DB snapshots. They can be used to restore your data to new DB instances in the destination region. You can also set up DB Event Subscriptions to receive notifications when the copy is complete.
Once a DB Snapshot is copied to a specific AWS Region, any subsequent copy operations of the DB Snapshots of the same DB Instance to that Region will only transfer the data that has changed since the last copy. Thus the subsequent copy operations transfer fewer amounts of data and complete faster.
According to Joel Callaway, IT Operations Manager from Zoopla Property Group Ltd, a property and house prices website that attracts over 20 million visits per month, “We are very happy with RDS cross region snapshot copy feature as it gives us the ability to copy our data from one AWS region to another AWS region with minimal effort. Prior to this feature, it used to take 3 days and a number of manual steps to copy our snapshots. Now we have an automated process that helps us to achieve disaster recovery capabilities in just few steps.”
You will be charged only for the data transferred to copy the DB Snapshot and to store the copied snapshot at the destination region. As the DB Snapshot Copy is incremental as described above, for subsequent copy operations, you will only pay for the transfer of the changed data since the last copy, reducing your cross-regional data transfer costs.
Please refer to the DB Snapshot Copy section of the Amazon RDS User Guide to learn more.