AWS Storage Blog

AWS Backup provides centralized data protection across your AWS resources

Today, on AWS Storage Day 2020, we are excited to announce AWS Backup supports backups of Amazon FSx file systems and Windows workloads running on EC2, adding to the growing list of features to enhance your data protection. Amazon FSx customers may now enjoy the automation, ease-of-use, and managed compliance protection service that AWS Backup provides. This feature simplifies multi-service application protection, backup task monitoring, automates retention, and eliminates the need for user-defined scripts or third-party solutions. Likewise, AWS customers running Windows workloads on EC2 may now enjoy the same features of AWS Backup, including the ability to schedule application-consistent backups, define their lifecycle policies, and perform consistent restores.

AWS Backup is AWS’ native data protection platform that offers centralized, fully managed, and policy-based service to protect customer data and ensure compliance and business continuity across AWS services. Our top customers today like TransferWise and Rackspace are among some of the largest enterprises across many industry verticals including healthcare, financial services, industrials, manufacturing, and government.

By design, AWS Backup is compliant with PCI, ISO, HIPAA, and many other programs. For a complete list, see the AWS Backup entries in the AWS services in scope website.

With AWS Backup, you can centrally configure data protection (backup) policies and monitor backup activity across your AWS resources, including:

Protect Amazon FSx managed file systems and retain backups for compliance

Amazon FSx, a fully managed service that makes it easy to launch and run feature-rich and highly performant file systems, is the latest service to be included in the AWS Backup platform for protection. AWS Backup supports both Amazon FSx for Windows File Server and Amazon FSx for Lustre. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed, highly reliable file storage that is accessible over the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Amazon FSx for Lustre makes it easy and cost effective to launch and run Lustre, the world’s most popular high-performance file system. FSx for Lustre simplifies powering workloads where speed matters, such as machine learning, high performance computing (HPC), video processing, and financial modeling.

Customers today use AWS Backup to protect applications that span multiple resources. Amazon FSx and AWS Backup have come together to build an enterprise-class backup solution that fully protects application leveraging Amazon FSx file systems, in addition to other persistent storage services.  Today, Amazon FSx customers can create automatic, daily backups of their file systems, but these backups are taken separately from backups of other resources. Amazon FSx customers may now enjoy the automation, ease-of-use, and managed compliance protection service that AWS Backup provides.

This feature simplifies multi-service application protection, backup task monitoring, automates retention, and eliminates the need for user-defined scripts, or third-party solutions. Customers using AWS Backup apply backup policies by simply tagging desired AWS resources. Tagging makes it easy for customers to standardize backup policies across AWS services and ensure appropriate data backup, helping them to meet business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup’s backup policies enable you to control your backup frequencies and retention periods, while giving you granular control to manage backup and restore operations at the file-system level.

Ensure application-consistent snapshots for Windows workloads running on Amazon EC2

AWS Backup recently added support for its first application, via application-consistent backups of Microsoft workloads running on EC2, via Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). You can create, manage, and restore consistent backups of their Microsoft Windows server instances and Microsoft applications (including SQL Server, Active Directory, and Exchange Server) directly from the AWS Backup console.

In addition, you can schedule application-consistent backups, define their lifecycle policies, and perform consistent restores with AWS Backup – a managed backup service for in-cloud AWS services. To take application-consistent backups, AWS Backup integrates with AWS System Manager (SSM) to provide VSS-enabled, consistent backups while your applications are running, without requiring custom scripts or shutting down your instances. Getting started is as simple as a single click to enable application consistency, under advanced options when creating a backup plan in the AWS Backup console.

AWS Backup’s documentation guides you through the process of configuring application consistent backups.

Scale up and scale out your data protection with recently launched AWS Backup capabilities

As you scale up your workloads to use larger configurations or scale out across Regions, you can also scale your data protection across various workload types with this year’s other new backup capabilities from AWS Backup.

Manage backups for thousands of accounts at once with AWS Organizations

AWS Backup launched a new cross-account management functionality with AWS Organizations that enables customers to centrally manage and monitor their backups across their AWS accounts directly from the management account of their organizations. Administrators who previously had to manually duplicate their backup configurations across all of their organization’s accounts are new empowered to manage and monitor backups through a single process, from a single management account.

Customers can deploy an organization-wide backup plan to ensure compliance across all of their selected accounts in their AWS Organizations. This enables customers to standardize the way they implement backup policies, minimizing the risk for errors as well reducing the manual overhead. The cross-account management functionality from AWS Backup via AWS Organizations also facilitates greater transparency when it comes to meeting data protection regulations because a single backup policy can now be systematically applied across accounts. Customers can easily identify resources or accounts that have fallen out of compliance in minutes with a centralized view straight from the AWS Backup console.

To learn more about how to centrally manage backup tasks across AWS accounts in your organization, visit our recent technical blog.

Increase efficiencies in backup operations with AWS Backup’s capabilities to manage your backups at scale

AWS Backup has offered the new native management capability to manage your entire backup landscape from a central console. AWS Backup provides customers with the capability to monitor, operate, govern, and optimize data protection at scale in a unified manner consistent with all AWS customers’ experiences.

AWS Backup presents you with a single pane of glass from which to orchestrate and monitor your backups spanning AWS services. AWS Backup is also a command center where you can direct your backup-related activities. From this command center, you can configure backup plans, manage backup vaults, and initiate cross-account and Cross-Region copies, or resource- or item-level restores, all from a single console. In addition, due to AWS Backup’s seamless integration to AWS Organizations, you can now apply backup plans across multiple AWS accounts and at scale.

Simplify your opt-in and opt-out configuration experience across AWS resources

AWS Backup includes the ability to opt into (or out of) AWS Backup support for supported AWS services at the account level. Service opt-in provides you with an easy-to-configure solution to ensure that AWS Backup service coverage reflects exactly what you need. It will also make it easy for you to opt in when AWS Backup introduces support for a new service, without having to change tagging strategies.

Automatically onboard, configure, and manage backups for your Amazon Elastic File Systems

With in-console automatic Amazon EFS backups, AWS Backup automatically backs up all new file systems created using the Amazon EFS console the recommended settings (daily backups with a retention of 35 days). Automatic backups for Amazon EFS further simplify backup management of your file systems by easily enabling you to meet your business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. It is now as easy as checking a check box in the Amazon EFS console, or making a single API call, to enable backups for your existing file systems. You can also disable automatic backups for your file systems at any time.

Summary

In less than 2 years since its launch, AWS Backup is the AWS customer-trusted solution for creating and monitoring application-consistent backups spanning the services AWS Backup supports. Today, on Storage Day 2020, we announce AWS Backup’s support of Amazon FSx, for both Windows file system and Lustre, along with Windows workloads running on EC2. These new features empower Amazon FSx and EC2 on Windows customers to incorporate the the automation, ease-of-use, and managed compliance protection service of AWS Backup, eliminating the need for user-defined scripts or third-party solutions.

I also used this blog as an opportunity to highlight a number of other new features launched earlier in 2020. Customers can now leverage highly scalable backup management via AWS Organizations, a single pane of glass and command center for backups across AWS, and opt-in and opt-out options at the account level. To learn more about these new features and get started today, please visit the resources in the following section.

Thanks for reading this blog post, please leave a comment if you have any questions. Also, remember to join us on November 10, 2020, for the AWS Storage Day virtual event, to learn what is new across the AWS Storage portfolio.

Resources:

  1. Get started with AWS Backup today
  2. Browse AWS Backup’s documentation