AWS Backups

Subjects

• AWS Backups
• Disaster Recovery

Curated Materials

We're going to cover the very baics of backing up our data in AWS. We'll be using AWS Backups as a starting point, but there are a lot of products and services on the market that can do the same thing (and perhaps more.)

Remember, everything we're doing as engineers is pretty much about the production, movement, processing, and storage of data. That makes data pretty important. So important, that data is something you should back up, recover from on a regular basis (to test your backups), and generally treat it like the lifeblood of your organisation/business.

You don't have backups

• If you've never tested your backups, then you don't have backups
• A regular check on what's being backed up as well as equally regular recovery tests are important
• You do fire drills in your building (by law, in most countries), so why not do "fire" drills on your data... your organisation depends on it
• GitLab didn't do fire drills and look out well it turned out for them

AWS Backups

• About: https://aws.amazon.com/backup/
• Docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-backup/latest/devguide/whatisbackup.html
• EC2 Backup: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/amazon-ec2-backup-and-restore-using-aws-backup/
• EFS Backup: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/amazon-efs-backup-and-restore-using-aws-backup/
• Cool diagram: https://aws.amazon.com/backup/resources/?nc=sn&loc=5&backup-blogs.sort-by=item.additionalFields.createdDate&backup-blogs.sort-order=desc

Terraform Resources

• https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest/docs/resources/backup_vault
• https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest/docs/resources/backup_selection
• https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/aws/latest/docs/resources/backup_plan

Project(s)

• Most certainly have a project that involve recovering from a backup

Challenges

• Find a way of getting the student to break something, forcing them to backup