How do I create a continuous, periodic, or on-demand Amazon S3 backup in AWS Backup?

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Prerequisites:

• Attach the AWSBackupServiceRolePolicyForS3Backup and AWSBackupServiceRolePolicyForS3Restore AWS managed policies to your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role so that it has the required backup permissions.
• Turn on versioning for your Amazon S3 bucket before you take a backup.
• Activate Amazon EventBridge on the bucket so that continuous backups don't fail. If the s3:PutBucketNotification permission is denied for the backup role, then the job fails.

Note: Don't back up an S3 bucket that stores its own AWS CloudTrail logs at either the object or bucket level. Recursive API calls might occur that can increase your costs.

Create a continuous or periodic backup plan

Note: You must create and manage the backup plan in the same AWS Region as the S3 bucket.

Use continuous backups for point-in-time recovery (PITR). It's a best practice to use continuous backups for large buckets with frequent changes.

Use periodic backups for scheduled snapshots that AWS Backup generates based on the schedule that you define in the backup plan. The snapshot has a long retention period for long-term compliance or archival requirements.

You can configure both continuous and periodic backups for the same bucket. Make sure that they both use the same backup vault. Because snapshots are point-in-time consistent, there are no extra requests, costs, or rescans. Also, snapshots and continuous recovery points share data lineage, so there's no duplicate storage.

For more information, see Best practices and cost considerations for S3 backups and Compare S3 backup types.

To create a continuous or periodic backup plan, complete the following steps:

1. Open the AWS Backup console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Backup plans, and then choose Create Backup plan.
3. For Start options, choose Build a new plan, and then enter a backup plan name.
4. (Optional) Add tags to your backup plan.
5. For Backup rule configuration, enter a backup rule name.
6. For Backup vault, select a backup vault, and then choose a backup frequency.
7. For continuous backups, select Enable continuous backups for point-in-time recovery (PITR).
   Note: For periodic backups, don't select this option.
8. For Backup window, choose the default option or customize it.
9. (Optional) Use Copy to destination to create a cross-Region copy of your resources.
10. Choose Create plan.

To assign resources to your backup plan, complete the following steps:

1. Open the AWS Backup console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Backup plans, and then select the backup plan.
3. In Resource assignments, choose Assign resources.
4. For General, enter a resource assignment name, and then select an IAM role.
5. For Resource selection, choose Include specific resource types, and then select the S3 resource to assign the S3 bucket to the backup.
6. (Optional) Add tags to refine your selection.
7. Choose Assign resources.

AWS Backup initiates continuous backup jobs based on the frequency that you define in the backup rule. The backup jobs update metadata and apply retention settings, but they don't generate additional recovery points. PITR supports recovery up to a maximum of 35 days.

You can monitor backup jobs in the Jobs section of the AWS Backup console.

For more information, see Create a backup plan.

Create an on-demand backup

To create a backup outside the time that you defined in your backup plan, see Creating an on-demand backup using AWS Backup.

Related information

Amazon S3 backups

Considerations for Amazon S3 backup