How To Setup AWS Backup

Stop Losing Data! How to Automate EC2 Backups with AWS Backup (A Step-by-Step Guide)

Hey tech enthusiasts, welcome back to Darren’s Tech Tutorials!

If you’re running workloads on AWS, you know that data protection isn’t just nice to have—it’s absolutely essential. Manually creating snapshots of your EC2 instances is tedious and prone to human error. That’s where the incredible power of AWS Backup comes in!

AWS Backup is a fully managed service that centralizes and automates your backup processes across various AWS services. In this comprehensive guide, we’re going to walk through the exact steps shown in our latest video, setting up a “set-it-and-forget-it” daily backup schedule for your critical EC2 instances with a specific retention policy.

Let’s dive in and secure your data!

Why Choose AWS Backup?

Before we start clicking, understand the huge value AWS Backup provides. It offers a unified dashboard for scheduling, retaining, and managing backups not just for EC2, but also RDS databases, EBS volumes, DynamoDB tables, and more. This central management capability saves you time and ensures compliance across your organization.

Here is the exact plan we will execute today:

1. Access the centralized AWS Backup console.
2. Create a daily backup plan.
3. Set the retention period to 35 days.
4. Assign a specific EC2 instance to this new plan.

Accessing the AWS Backup Console

The first step is locating the service within your AWS environment.

1. Log in to the AWS Management Console. Ensure you are logged in with credentials that have the necessary permissions (e.g., an IAM user or role with administrative access).
2. Navigate to the Service: In the search bar at the top of the console, type “AWS Backup” and select the service result.
3. Review the Dashboard: You’ll land on the AWS Backup dashboard, which gives you an overview of your current backup jobs, recovery points, and policies.

Creating Your Daily Backup Plan

The backup plan defines when the backups run, how long they are kept, and where they are stored. This is the heart of our automation process.

Step 1: Initialize the Backup Plan

1. On the left navigation pane of the AWS Backup dashboard, click Backup plans.
2. Click the orange button labeled Create Backup plan.
3. You have three options: Start with a template, build a new plan, or restore a plan from JSON. Select Build a new plan.

Step 2: Define Plan Details

1. Backup Plan Name: Give your plan a clear, descriptive name. For this example, let’s use Daily-EC2-Production-Backup.
2. Add Backup Rule: Under the “Rules configuration” section, click Add rule.

Step 3: Configure the Backup Rule (The 35-Day Retention Policy)

This is where we define the schedule and retention requirements specified in our goal.

1. Backup Rule Name: Name this rule something descriptive, like Daily-35-Day-Retention.
2. Backup Vault: Select a Backup Vault. This is the secure location where your backups will be stored. If you don’t have one, select Create new Backup vault and give it a name (e.g., Production-EC2-Vault).
3. Backup Frequency: Select Daily.
4. Backup Window: This defines when the backup starts. We recommend setting a window outside of your peak usage hours.
   • Start time: Choose your preferred UTC time (e.g., 03:00 AM).
   • Complete within: 8 hours (default is fine).
5. Lifecycle: This determines the retention policy.
   • Transition to cold storage: Leave this unchecked for now, as we want accessible, warm storage for the first 35 days.
   • Retain: Check the box and set the value to 35 days. (After 35 days, the recovery points that use this rule will be automatically deleted.)

Click Create plan. Your new backup plan is now defined, but it isn’t backing anything up yet!

Assigning Resources to Your New Backup Plan

The final crucial step is assigning the EC2 instance (the “resource”) that the plan should protect.

Step 1: Navigate to Resource Assignments

1. After creating the plan, you will be taken to its detailed configuration page.
2. Click the Assign resources button.

Step 2: Configure the Assignment Group

1. Resource assignment name: Give the assignment a name, like Production-Web-Server-Assignment.
2. IAM Role: Choose the Default role unless you have a specific custom IAM role for backup operations.
3. Define Resources: You can select resources either by Resource ID (if you know the specific ID of your EC2 instance) or by Tags (which is often more scalable).
   • If using Tags: Select EC2 as the resource type, and enter the specific Key and Value tag that applies to your production server (e.g., Key: Environment, Value: Production).
   • If using Resource IDs: Select EC2 and choose the specific Instance ID from the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Review and Complete

1. Ensure your assignment group is linked to the correct Backup plan (e.g., Daily-EC2-Production-Backup).
2. Click Assign resources.

Your Automated Backup System is Ready!

Congratulations! You have successfully configured AWS Backup to automatically protect your mission-critical EC2 instance. Every day, at the time you specified, AWS will initiate a backup job and manage the retention of that recovery point for exactly 35 days. No more manual snapshots, no more worries about forgetting to back up a vital server.

Security and automation are key to building professional cloud architectures, and AWS Backup makes both achievable with just a few clicks.

Now it’s your turn! Head into the AWS console and set up your first automated backup plan today.

Did this tutorial help you secure your infrastructure? If so, hit that Like button on the video, Subscribe to Darren’s Tech Tutorials for more guides, and let us know in the comments which AWS service you want us to tackle next! Happy backing up!