(Cloud) Database Backups for the Paranoid

backups for D.R.

Backing up your database is just good practice. AWS’s built in EBS snapshots allow you to perform such backups that you can use for future restoration of the database.

There are two major shortcomings of using EBS snapshots. The first is something everyone is well aware of : snapshotting causes downtime (even if only for a couple of seconds). Hence, snapshots on production workloads may be a problem.

Database Snapshots (EBS snapshots)

To summarize the two shortcomings of EBS snapshots:

1. Potential Downtime — The database needs to be locked for a short period of time while taking the snapshot.
2. Lack of Portability — The EBS snapshot isn’t portable — i.e. you cannot take the snapshot off AWS and use it to import / recreate an on-premises instance of a database

Old Fashioned Database Dumps (Exports)

So, how do you get around this downtime issue and the lack of portability? Simple — Do an old fashioned database export (dump) and store that dump on the relatively cheap S3 storage.

Now that you have the gist of the problem and the solution, let us design a backup solution for the truly paranoid.

Combine Database Exports (old…