Database Backup & Recovery

Backup Strategies & Disaster Recovery

Automated Backups

Daily Backups

Automatic daily backup during maintenance window

Point-in-Time Recovery

Restore to any second within retention period

Transaction Logs

Continuous backup of transaction logs

Retention Period

1-35 days (default 7 days)

Manual Snapshots

User-Initiated

Create snapshots on-demand

Persistent Storage

Retained until manually deleted

Cross-Region Copy

Copy snapshots to other regions

Share Snapshots

Share with other AWS accounts

Backup Storage & Costs

Free Backup Storage

Equal to database storage size

  • • Automated backups included
  • • No additional cost
  • • Within retention period

Additional Storage

Beyond free tier allocation

  • • Manual snapshots
  • • Extended retention
  • • Cross-region copies

S3 Storage

Backups stored in Amazon S3

  • • High durability (99.999999999%)
  • • Multiple AZ replication
  • • Incremental backups

Recovery Options

Restore from Snapshot

Create new DB instance from snapshot

Point-in-Time Restore

Restore to specific timestamp

Cross-Region Restore

Restore from cross-region snapshot

Clone Database

Create copy for testing/development

Disaster Recovery

Multi-AZ Deployment

Automatic failover for high availability

Read Replicas

Promote replica to master if needed

Cross-Region Backups

Geographic disaster recovery

RTO & RPO Planning

Recovery time and point objectives

Backup Best Practices

Enable Automated Backups

Always enable for production

Test Restores

Regularly validate backups

Cross-Region Copies

Geographic redundancy

Monitor Backup Status

CloudWatch alerts

Aurora Backups

Continuous Backups

Automatic continuous backup to S3

Fast Recovery

Point-in-time recovery in minutes

Backtrack

Rewind database without restore

Important Notes

Backup Window

Choose low-activity periods

Performance Impact

Minimal with Multi-AZ

Encryption

Backups inherit encryption

Backup & Recovery Exam Tips

  • • Automated backups enable point-in-time recovery within retention period
  • • Manual snapshots persist until manually deleted
  • • Multi-AZ deployments take backups from standby to reduce I/O impact
  • • Aurora provides continuous backup and fast point-in-time recovery
  • • Cross-region snapshot copies provide geographic disaster recovery
Database Migration & DMS Next: Exam Questions