White Paper

AWS Snapshot vs.

Backup

White Paper

Overview Data in the cloud requires the same, if not higher levels of protection as data stored in private datacenters, where backup has long been a must-have. However, AWS snapshots and snapshot management tools are often used in the cloud as substitutes for backups. Such an approach increases data protection costs, drains IT administration time, and introduces new risks when compared with backup.

The disadvantages of relying on snapshots come from their nature. In a nutshell, a snapshot is a locked-down copy of your data that can reside only in expensive cloud storage. You cannot move the snapshot data to cheaper cloud storage, you cannot reduce its size, you cannot copy the data outside the cloud, and you cannot perform granular recovery.

The only thing you can do is restore a snapshot to an EBS volume. Backups, in contrast, can be stored anywhere and offer a variety of data size reduction and recovery features to reduce your costs and administration time. This white paper explores the main advantages of using NAKIVO Backup & Replication vs. AWS snapshots as a means of data protection.

What Are EBS Volume SnapshotsIn AWS, storage for EC2 instances is provided by EBS volumes, which can be attached to instances and act as disks. AWS provides the ability to create EBS volume snapshots, which can be used as a subpar substitute for backups.

An EBS snapshot is a point-in-time copy of your Amazon EBS volume, which is lazily copied to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). EBS snapshots are incremental, which means that each new snapshot will store the data that changed from the last snapshot.

How Backups Are Different from Snapshots When protecting an AWS EC2 instance, NAKIVO Backup & Replication first makes temporary snapshots of all the instance volumes, reads data from those snapshots and sends it to the backup repository, and then discards the snapshots.

For NAKIVO Backup & Replication, a backup repository is just a folder that can be located anywhere. In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is in full control of the data and can apply data reduction techniques and provide instant granular recovery for the data.

Using NAKIVO Backup & Replication instead of AWS snapshots can result in 4X data storage cost savings, fewer security risks, and less time spent on backup administration.

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Overview Data in the cloud requires the same, if not higher levels of protection as data stored in private datacenters, where backup has long been a must-have. However, AWS snapshots and snapshot management tools are often used in the cloud as substitutes for backups. Such an approach increases data protection costs, drains IT administration time, and introduces new risks when compared with backup.

The disadvantages of relying on snapshots come from their nature. In a nutshell, a snapshot is a locked-down copy of your data that can reside only in expensive cloud storage. You cannot move the snapshot data to cheaper cloud storage, you cannot reduce its size, you cannot copy the data outside the cloud, and you cannot perform granular recovery.

The only thing you can do is restore a snapshot to an EBS volume. Backups, in contrast, can be stored anywhere and offer a variety of data size reduction and recovery features to reduce your costs and administration time. This white paper explores the main advantages of using NAKIVO Backup & Replication vs. AWS snapshots as a means of data protection.

What Are EBS Volume SnapshotsIn AWS, storage for EC2 instances is provided by EBS volumes, which can be attached to instances and act as disks. AWS provides the ability to create EBS volume snapshots, which can be used as a subpar substitute for backups.

An EBS snapshot is a point-in-time copy of your Amazon EBS volume, which is lazily copied to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). EBS snapshots are incremental, which means that each new snapshot will store the data that changed from the last snapshot.

How Backups Are Different from Snapshots When protecting an AWS EC2 instance, NAKIVO Backup & Replication first makes temporary snapshots of all the instance volumes, reads data from those snapshots and sends it to the backup repository, and then discards the snapshots.

For NAKIVO Backup & Replication, a backup repository is just a folder that can be located anywhere. In addition, NAKIVO Backup & Replication is in full control of the data and can apply data reduction techniques and provide instant granular recovery for the data.

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Saving 4X on Data Storage In a nutshell, you can get to 4X or greater data storage savings by using NAKIVO Backup & Replication, that can take advantage of more cost-effective AWS storage and reduce the amount of data that you need to store. Let’s take a closer look at this.

Lower-cost Cloud StorageNAKIVO Backup & Replication can store backups on Cold HDD EBS Volumes, which are 2X cheaper than storing EBS snapshots in S3. Compare: storing 1 TB of data in EBS snapshots costs $50 per month, while storing 1 TB of data on Cold HDD EBS volumes costs just $25 per month. Here’s a table to put these numbers into perspective:

Amount of Data EBS Snapshot in S3 Cold HDD EBS Volume

1 TB

5 TB

10 TB

25 TB

50 TB

$600 / year

$3,000 / year

$6,000 / year

$15,000 / year

$30,000 / year

$300 / year

$1,500 / year

$3,000 / year

$7,500 / year

$15,000 / year

Just by storing your data on Cold HDD EBS volumes with NAKIVO Backup & Replication you can save 2X on data storage costs. But savings don’t stop here, as the actual amount of data that you need to store can be dramatically reduced too.

Data Size ReductionAWS snapshots store all data without using any data reduction techniques. That is, if you have 100 GB that includes duplicate data in several instances (such as OS and application files), or 100 GB of data that can be compressed at a 10:1 ratio (such as text files), you will still be charged for 100 GB by AWS. In contrast, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides built-in data reduction features that automatically reduce data size and therefore significantly lower your storage expenses.

First off, NAKIVO Backup & Replication automatically skips swap files and partitions in Windows-based and Linux based EC2 instances. Because swap contents change constantly, you would otherwise store and pay for gigabytes of unnecessary data.

Then, all backups are automatically deduplicated at the block level across the entire backup repository, saving only unique data. That is, if several instances have the same data, only unique data blocks will be saved to the backup repository. The deduplicated blocks are further compressed so the backups occupy the least amount of storage space. What does this mean in real life?

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Here’s an example from one of our customers, China Airlines, who has over 900 VMs in their infrastructure: “Global data deduplication is another amazing feature. It reduced our storage space by about 60% and allows us to store more recovery points per VM backup. In addition, we were able to save money on direct storage costs and other costs, such as maintenance,” said Stivan Chou, the airline's representative.

Decreasing Security RisksIn an on-premises environment, there are multiple layers of security that can prevent an attacker from wiping your virtual infrastructure. Even in the worst case, if an attacker bypasses the firewall or breaks through the VPN, then locates the vCenter server, then hacks into the vCenter server, and then deletes all VMs (which is next to impossible to accomplish, realistically) you would still have backups to recover from. Not so in the cloud if you rely on snapshots! If your cloud credentials leak, everything including EC2 instances, volumes, and snapshots can be deleted within seconds resulting in complete data loss and no way to recover.

Here’s a sad example: a company named Code Spaces offered developers source code repositories and project management services. They were primarily based on AWS. A hacker gained access to their AWS Control Panel and demanded a ransom.

When Code Spaces didn’t comply, the hacker deleted their machines and snapshots, which effectively destroyed the seven-year-old company. Even without an attacker, malware or a disgruntled employee could do the same. To prevent such a scenario, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides an automated way to copy EC2 instance backups to an on-premises backup repository, or to a repository created under a different AWS account.

Reducing Time Spent on AdministrationApplication-consistent Backups AWS snapshots are only crash-consistent, that is, they create an equivalent of a machine that was ungracefully powered off (think of pulling the power cable out of the server). A crash-consistent state is good for file servers, but not for applications and databases that store portions of data in memory and could have incomplete I/O operations at the time a snapshot is made.

A crash-consistent snapshot is likely to return your applications and databases in the “dirty” state upon recovery and force you to waste time on manual restore operations. Still, you will run the risk of losing some or all of your data. In contrast, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides the ability to create application-aware backups and replicas of EC2 instances, ensuring that the data of applications and databases is transactionally consistent.

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Advanced Backup Retention Policy Manual snapshots, homebrew scripts, and snapshot management tools have a common drawback: basic retention policy for storing data. This usually results in a subpar data protection approach: either keep a long chain of snapshots and overpay for storage, keep a short chain of snapshots and hope the older data won’t be needed, or spend time on manual snapshot administration. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers a Grandfather-Father-Son backup retention policy, which enables you to save and rotate recovery points on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This way, you will be able to go back in time while saving storage space.

File and Application Object RecoveryEBS volume snapshots are exactly that: just snapshots. All you can do with a snapshot is restore it to an EBS volume. This means that you cannot perform any kind of granular recovery from the snapshots. In contrast, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides the ability to instantly recover files, Microsoft Exchange objects, Microsoft SQL objects, and Microsoft Active Directory objects directly from compressed and deduplicated EC2 instance backups.

SummaryAlthough cloud technologies are generally considered to be efficient, reliable, and affordable, this does not necessarily mean that data protection options available in the cloud automatically inherit all these qualities. Taking a deeper look into how the EC2 instance data can be protected reveals that snapshots are costly, insecure, and inefficient when compared to EC2 instance backups. By using NAKIVO Backup & Replication instead of snapshots, you can save 4X on data storage costs, improve data security with on-premises backup copies, as well as save time spent on snapshot administration. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers advanced features that increase backup performance, improve reliability, speed up recovery, and, as a result, help save time and money.

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Page 6© 2017 NAKIVO, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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NAKIVO Backup & Replication at a GlanceNAKIVO Backup & Replication is a fast, reliable, and affordable VM backup solution for protecting VMware, Hyper-V, and AWS EC2 environments. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers advanced features that increase backup performance, improve reliability, speed up recovery, and, as a result, help save time and money.

Deploy in under 1 minute

Pre-configured VMware VA and AWS AMI; 1-click deployment on ASUSTOR, QNAP, Synology, and WD NAS; 1-click Windows installer, 1-command Linux installer

Protect VMs

Native, agentless, image-based, application-aware backup and replication for VMware, Hyper-V, and AWS VMs

Reduce backup size

Exclusion of SWAP files and partitions, global backup deduplication, adjustable backup compression

Increase backup speed

Forever-incremental backups with CBT/RCT, LAN-free data transfer, network acceleration, up to 2X performance when installed on NAS

Ensure recoverability

Instant backup verification with screenshots of test-recovered VMs, backup copy offsite/to the cloud

Decrease recovery time

Instant recovery of VMs, files, Exchange objects, SQL objects, Active Directory objects, DR with VM replicas

About NAKIVOFounded in 2012, NAKIVO is a US corporation dedicated to developing a fast, reliable, and affordable data protection solution for VMware, Hyper-V, and cloud environments. With 20 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, 5-star online community reviews, 97.3% customer satisfaction with support, and more than 10,000 deployments worldwide including by Honda, Coca-Cola, China Airlines, Microsemi and many others, NAKIVO is one of the fastest-growing data protection software developers in the industry. NAKIVO has a global presence, with over 2,000 channel partners in 124 countries worldwide. Visit www.nakivo.com to learn more.

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