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Recipe: Creating AWS RDS Backup Policies

Expected deliverables:

A Policy to create backups of AWS RDS databases.

Time to complete: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

  • An AWS RDS Database
  • AWS S3 Bucket configured as Backup Repository to protect AWS RDS instances.
  • A Worker Configuration in the same Account, Region and Availability Zone where the protected RDS instances reside.
  • A Database Account added to Veeam Backup for AWS.

Before you start: Creating RDS Backups is supported for Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL DB instances only. For other databases, just Cloud-native Snapshots will be created. The Review Estimated Cost will be available only if you have created a schedule for the backup policy at the Schedule step.

Assumptions: You have an existing Veeam Backup for AWS deployment.

Method:

  1. Login the Veeam Backup for AWS web interface. Navigate to Policies > RDS and Click in Add
  2. At the Info step, enter a Name and Description for the new backup policy.
  3. At the Sources step, choose one of the following options
    • Select the Account option if you want to back up RDS instances belonging to a single AWS account. Then, specify an IAM role with proper privileges
    • Select the Organization option if you want to back up RDS instances within an AWS Organization
  4. At the Resources step,
    • In the Regions section, click Choose regions to select the regions in which RDS instances that you want to protect reside.
    • In the Resources section, click Choose resources to protect to select RDS instances that Veeam Backup for AWS will back up. You can choose to protect all RDS instances, or specific RDS instances.
  5. At the Targets step:
    • Click Replica Snapshot if you want to replicate the snapshot to a different region. Then click in Configure region mapping to configure the target Region.
    • To create image-level backups, set the Enable backups toggle to On. Then, in the Repositories window, select a backup repository where the created image-level backups will be stored. Click Apply.
    • To store long-term backups into a low-cost archive storage, select the Archives will be stored in check box. Then, in the Repositories window, select a backup repository where the archived data will be stored. Click Apply.
  6. At the Processing Options step, select a Database Account whose credentials will be used to authenticate against databases of the DB instances to be protected. As an option, you can set a different Database Account for every DB Instance to be protected by this policy.
  7. At the Schedule step you can instruct Veeam to start the backup policy automatically (Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly) according to a specific backup schedule or leave the default for manual backup. Combining multiple schedule types together allows you to use the archive backup option.
  8. At the Tags step, you can assign custom tags to cloud-native snapshots created by the backup policy. You can also choose to copy the tags from the source RDS Instances. Click Next
  9. At the Settings step, you can enable automatic retries, schedule health checks and specify notification settings for the backup policy, otherwise leave the default and click Next
  10. At the Cost Estimation step, review the approximate monthly cost of AWS services that Veeam will require to protect the RDS instances added to the backup policy. Click Next
  11. At the Summary step, review configuration information and click Finish.

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