Clumio by Commvault: Data Protection and Resilience for AWS

We use Clumio  as our ransomware recovery backstop for critical production workloads across a multi-account AWS  environment. The primary use case is air-gapped vaulting of RDS , DynamoDB, S3 , and EFS data so that in a worst-case ransomware scenario, we can restore to a clean recovery account that the attacker never had access to. We back up across more than five AWS  accounts spanning non-production through production, with per-environment backup frequency policies controlled by a reusable Terraform  module.

Before Clumio , our disaster recovery posture for ransomware was largely theoretical. We had AWS Backup  snapshots in the same account, which wouldn't survive a compromised IAM  scenario. Clumio gave us a genuinely isolated vault that sits outside our AWS Organization's blast radius. This allowed us to go from thinking we could recover to actually running a validated gameday where we restored production-representative data into a fresh account and proved end-to-end recoverability. It also forced us to formalize our per-resource-type Recovery Time Objective  expectations, which improved our overall incident response planning.

Secure Vault with cross-account restore is the standout feature. The fact that backed-up data lands in Clumio's infrastructure rather than an S3  bucket in our own organization means a compromised admin role can't touch it. The Terraform  provider is also critical for us since we manage everything as code. Being able to define protection groups, policies, and organizational unit connections in HCL made onboarding accounts repeatable. The multi-resource-type coverage (RDS , DynamoDB, S3, EFS, EC2 ) under one platform is convenient too because we don't need separate tooling per service.

The account onboarding process deploys around 20 IAM  roles per account, which is heavy. Consolidating those or offering a slimmer permission set for read-only backup (versus full restore) would help with security review friction. Cross-account restore into a target account still requires manual steps for KMS. If Clumio could handle re-encrypting with the target account's CMK during restore rather than requiring Multi-Region Key pre-staging, that would save significant preparation time. Also, the restore API could surface better progress telemetry since right now, large RDS restores are a bit of a black box until they complete or fail. Finally, DocumentDB and MongoDB Atlas  backup support would round out our stack nicely.

We have been using Clumio for about one year.

We were relying on native AWS Backup  for snapshots and cross-region copies. The problem is AWS Backup operates within your own account's trust boundary. If an attacker gains admin access, they can delete snapshots, modify vault access policies, or disable backup plans entirely. We needed an air-gapped solution where the backup data is unreachable from any IAM  principal in our organization. That is what drove the switch to Clumio.

Price it against the cost of the alternative, not against native AWS Backup. Native  backup is cheaper on paper but doesn't give you ransomware isolation. When you factor in the engineering time to build and maintain a custom air-gapped vault solution, Clumio's pricing is reasonable. That said, push for volume discounts if you're backing up a large number of accounts. The per-account onboarding model can add up quickly in a large AWS Organization. Make  sure you understand the per-GB vault storage costs for your data growth trajectory.

We looked at Druva (now part of the AWS ecosystem), Cohesity , and considered building a custom solution with AWS Backup Vault Lock plus cross-account copies to a locked-down organization account. Druva's coverage for our specific resource types was less mature at the time. Cohesity  felt more geared toward on-premises/hybrid environments than cloud-native AWS. The DIY approach would have required significant engineering investment to get the isolation guarantees that Clumio provides out of the box.

Invest time upfront in your Terraform module design for Clumio policies. Decide early whether backup frequency is controlled per environment or per caller because refactoring that later across many accounts is painful. Also, run a restore gameday before you actually need it since the cross-account KMS, networking (BYOIP, VPC peering, PrivateLink), and IAM  dependencies during a real restore are non-trivial, and you don't want to discover them during an incident.

I use the product for air-gapped, off-premises backups.

It has improved our disaster recovery footprint. Previously, backups were only stored on premises. Having an offsite backup improves our reliability and security.

Policies are a valuable feature. I can create standard policies for instances and databases to enforce our company's information security policy. Using tags in AWS , I can add the desired tag for a policy and achieve compliance.

A UI refresh is always nice.

I have been using the solution for four years.

We have been using Clumio  for four years. Before that, we used AWS Backup  and Snapshots.

The cost model is better now with Pay-as-you-go. I was not a fan of the buy-up-front model due to the scaling of data size.

I did not consider alternate solutions, as I had an internal Clumio  representative relationship from a prior company.

I hope CommVault continues to improve the product and keeps the pricing competitive.

I use the solution for backup and retention.

The solution has helped with cost optimization and provided clarity in our backup policy.

Working with the Clumio /Commvault team has been a very good experience.

More alignment with Clumio  and Commvault branding would have helped us understand the product better during the discovery phase.

I have used the solution for one month.

Previously, we used the native AWS  solution.

Having clarity on pricing is helpful.

We considered Veam and BackBlaze as alternate solutions.

The solution is easy to understand and set up.

I use AWS Backup  and Recovery for our AWS  infrastructure to ensure efficient backup and recovery processes.

We now have the peace of mind knowing that our entire AWS  infrastructure is fully backed up into an air-gapped environment. This includes EC2  Instances, S3  Buckets, and DynamoDB Tables.

The Protect and Restore features are very helpful. I can set up tags to include specific assets in our environment for backup. When I include those tags in my search, the assets are easily found and can be added for backup. I love the restore feature and how easily I can restore files, folders, or an entire image.

I would like to see a Dry Run feature for a full disaster recovery implemented.

I have used the solution for 1 month.

I used N2W prior to this and was unhappy with multiple areas of the product. I found the backup and restore process confusing. I was charged for licensing and for hosting the platform in our ecosystem along with all the snapshots, which proved to be expensive.

The credit system can be confusing, but if you talk to your account manager, they can help alleviate those concerns.

I did not consider alternate solutions.

I recommend starting with a trial and ensuring that the CloudFormation  stack properly deploys in your environment. Set up email alerting to make sure you receive notifications about backup successes or failures.