Native backup for Amazon EC2 instances is here!

Today is an exciting day for the Veeam Team, as we launch Veeam Backup for AWS, delivering AWS-native, cost-effective and secure backup with the ability to easily recover from any cloud data loss scenario in minutes.

There are many reasons why this product is a big deal, making it hard to pick a favorite.  One of the most important is a fully featured free edition, however the strongest value comes in the capabilities explained below. Read on to discover why this is a must-have for anyone running Amazon EC2 instances.

AWS-native

  • Automates Amazon EBS snapshots for frequent backup and fast restores
  • Copy to Amazon S3 for long-term retention
  • Policy-based protection
  • Deployed from Amazon Marketplace with simple web-based management UI

Cost-effective

  • Built-in cost estimation delivers greater cost control
  • Flexible licensing choices include free, consumption-based or BYOL options

Secure

  • Support for IAM role separation as well as cross-region and cross-account configuration
  • Multi-factor authentication for backup admins

Let’s take a deeper look at Veeam Backup for AWS, and how it can be deployed.

Veeam Backup for AWS is deployed from the AWS marketplace into a specific AWS region, whether that’s the same account as production, or a separate account to act as a security boundary (which is a recommended best practice). Once its deployed and configured, you are presented with a dashboard that shows what resources are being protected.

Policy-based backup protection

All the instances are protected through policies allowing for greater control. For example, you could create gold, silver and bronze policies to protect different workloads.

Under the policy, you have the options to set:

  • Account (IAM roles)
  • Regions (select multiple regions to protect)
  • Protection (all resources or select a subset of instances or tags)
  • Exclude resources
  • Snapshot settings (whether to use snapshots and define retention period)
  • Backup settings (repository locations, scheduling and retention periods)
  • Cost estimation
  • Notification settings

Built into Veeam Backup for AWS is a cost estimator, showing granular information on how much cost running the policy will incur, with an option to export to CSV or XML. Included in the cost estimation is the following information:

  • Backup costs
  • Snapshot costs
  • Traffic costs
  • Transaction costs
  • Total costs

The cost estimator is an important feature, allowing consumers to understand the impacts of the backup policy. This includes traffic costs which is important if a repository is configured outside of the region that the workloads are running (as Amazon AWS charges for traffic outside of the region, but not for in-region traffic).

Worker nodes

To help further reduce traffic costs, workers can be deployed in a region or availability zone where workloads are located. Workers are automatically instantiated only when tranferring data to and from Amazon S3 or during file-level recovery, and subsequently terminated, reducing any costs associated with backup and restore transactions.

Restore modes

Veeam Backup for AWS provides three capabilities when restoring workloads.

  1. Restore to the original location (overwrite the original instance)
  2. Restore to a new location (create a new instance)
  3. File-level recoveries

Restore to the original location

This option overwrites the original instance with the restored instance, so all the data existing in the existing instance will be replaced. This option keeps all the configuration of the instance and does not change any of the settings.

Restore to a new location

When you select Restore to a new location, or with different settings, several options are available to reconfigure the instance upon the completion of the restore.

  • Region
  • Encryption options
  • Instance name
  • Instance type
  • Network settings
    • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
    • Subnet
    • Security group

File-level recovery

With Veeam Backup for AWS, you can perform granular file-level restores. This allows you to restore an individual file without having to restore the whole instance to a region, saving time and costs on restores.

The diagram above shows how the file-level recovery is carried out.

The file-level restore is presented through a web service. Through Veeam Backup for AWS, when requesting a file-level recovery, you are given a unique URL. Simply navigate to the URL which presents you with the guest OS structure. Find the data you want and recover it by directly downloading to the local computer.

Veeam Backup & Replication

For existing Veeam Backup & Replication customers, you also have the capability to restore your on-premises workloads to Amazon EC2 through Direct Restore to AWS and then enable protection with Veeam Backup for AWS. Veeam Backup & Replication also integrates with Amazon S3 repositories created by Veeam Backup for AWS, allowing you to restore any backup of an Amazon EC2 instance to an on-premises infrastructure, providing significant enhancements to your data management strategy.

Summary

In summary, the new release of Veeam Backup for AWS has great new capabilities that expand the use cases for customers looking for an enterprise-class Cloud Data Management solution. Veeam Backup for AWS is simple to configure, reliable to use, and provides the flexibility to integrate with existing infrastructures, based on the Veeam products that our customers already use daily.

Find out more about Veeam Backup for AWS or get started today with easy deployment directly from the AWS Marketplace.

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