Amazon Web Services Launches AWS Backup

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Jan 29, 2019
2 minute read
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As surprising as it sounds, Amazon Web Services, which has offered cloud storage since 2006, hasn’t provided a fully managed backup service—until now.

The Seattle-based mega-company has launched AWS Backup, an automated, centralized backup service that enables businesses to back up their data across the AWS network and on-premises more efficiently.

AWS Backup gives enterprises a single point of control for configuring and auditing data stored in AWS resources and allows storage admins to automate backup scheduling, set retention policies and monitor recent backup activity in one place. It features support for block storage volumes, databases and most file systems.


The app eliminates the need for users to create custom scripts or perform manual backup activities. With the AWS Management Console, users can create policies around backup frequency and data retention, AWS said.

AWS Backup works directly with Amazon DynamoDB, Elastic Block Store (EBS), Elastic File System (EFS), Relational Database Service (RDS) and AWS Storage Gateway. AWS also said it plans to add support for additional services in the future.

Those services in AWS do provide backup capabilities, but companies often create custom scripts to automate backups, enforce retention policies and consolidate backup activity across multiple services—all with the goal of meeting business and regulatory compliance requirements.

“We designed AWS Backup for [the] type of builder who has told us that they want one place to go for backups versus having to do it across multiple, individual services,” said Bill Vass, vice president of Storage, Automation and Management Services at AWS.

For more information, go here.

Chris Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.

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