Backup Repository: How to Create Amazon S3 buckets

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is commonly used for backup and restore operations. This is due to its durability, scalability, and features tailored for data management. Here’s why you should use S3 for backup and restore. In this guide, you will learn baout “Backup Repository: How to Create Amazon S3 buckets”. Please see how to Fix Microsoft Outlook Not Syncing Issue, how to reset MacBook password after all other options fail, and how to create an EC2 Instance.

Organizations of varying sizes and industries can securely store and protect large volumes of data for diverse applications. With cost-effective storage classes and user-friendly management tools. Users can efficiently control expenses, organize data, and implement customized access controls to meet specific business, organizational, and compliance requirements.

With S3, there are no minimum fees. You only pay for what you use. Prices are based on the location of your S3 bucket. You can estimate your monthly bill using the AWS S3 Calculator.

Why you should use S3?

Below are some reasons for leveraging S3 as it relates to backup. There are numerous use cases but I will stick to the topic at hand.

• Leverage Amazon S3’s versatile capabilities for building scalable, resilient, and secure backup solutions.
• Protect critical data, applications, and IT systems seamlessly for disaster recovery. Whether in the AWS Cloud or on-premises, eliminating the need for an extra physical site and reducing associated expenses.
• Efficiently retire physical infrastructure and achieve long-term data retention at optimal rates by leveraging S3 storage classes. S3 allows you to define lifecycle policies. Automating the transition of objects between storage classes or deleting them when they are no longer needed. This helps in optimising storage costs.
• Objects stored in S3 are easily accessible over the internet. This makes it convenient for backup and restore operations from various locations.
• S3 provides high durability for stored objects. It replicates data across multiple geographically dispersed data centres. Thus, reducing the risk of data loss due to hardware failures or disasters.

Also, see How to grant public access to S3 Bucket using Policy, how to sync S3 Bucket with an EC2 instance, and how to enable Amazon S3 default bucket encryption using S3.

Backup Repository

A repository is a specific folder created by Veeam Backup for AWS or yourself in an Amazon S3 bucket. That is, when creating an S3 bucket to serve as a backup repository for Veeam. You can also streamline the process by utilising the Veeam Backup and Replication software.

Veeam Backup for AWS uses Amazon S3 buckets as target locations for EC2 and RDS image-level backups. Also, for additional copies of Amazon VPC backups, indexes of EFS file systems and Veeam Backup for AWS configuration backups.

Note: As part of the AWS Free Tier, you can get started with Amazon S3 for free. Upon sign-up, new AWS customers receive 5GB of Amazon S3 storage in the S3 Standard storage class; 20,000 GET Requests; 2,000 PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST Requests; and 100 GB of Data Transfer Out each month.

Your usage for the free tier is calculated each month across all AWS Regions. Except the AWS GovCloud Region and automatically applied to your bill; unused monthly usage will not roll over.

Here is how to redirect requests for your bucket’s website endpoint to another bucket or domain, how to delete AWS S3 Bucket and Objects via  AWS CLI from Linux, and How to Fix Microsoft Outlook Not Syncing Issue.

Managing Backup Repositories

The image below is a high level architecture that I do not need to explain in detail here. We will discuss in the guide on how to protect RDS and EC2 instance with Veeam. To store backups in Amazon S3 buckets, configure backup repositories as shown below.

Create S3 Bucket

After you sign up and creat an AWS account. Most times, you would want to create an S3 bucket in Amazon S3. Every object in Amazon S3 is stored in a bucket. Before you can store data in Amazon S3, you must create a bucket. To create a bucket, please follow these steps.

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, click on “All services” and select S3. This would open the Amazon S3 console.

Click on Create Bucket as shown below.

Choose the AWS Region where you want the bucket to reside. Enter a name for your bucket.

Note: After you create the bucket, you cannot change its name. Choose a unique name for your bucket within your preferred region. Amazon S3 requires global uniqueness for bucket names.

Under Object Ownership, you can choose any of the options to disable or enable ACLs and control ownership of objects uploaded in your bucket. I will be going with the recommended settings.

Note: Object storage including S3 does not necessarily require object versioning. Object versioning is an optional feature that you can enable or disable for a specific S3 bucket based on your needs.

If versioning is enabled, each new version of an object is assigned a unique version ID, and you can access and restore previous versions if needed. If versioning is not enabled, S3 will overwrite existing objects with the same key, and there won’t be a history of previous versions.

I have decided to enable versioning as shown below and block all public access to the bucket. By default, all four Block Public Access settings are enabled. AWS recommends that you keep all settings enabled unless you know that you need to turn off one or more of them for your specific use case.

Encryption on Backup Repositories

Note: For enhanced data security, Veeam Backup for AWS allows you to enable encryption at the repository level. Veeam Backup for AWS encrypts backup files stored in backup repositories the same way as Veeam Backup & Replication encrypts backup files stored in backup repositories

I will be selecting the “Server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3)”. I will also select Enable for the Bucket key.

Note: Veeam Backup for AWS also supports scenarios where data is backed up to S3 buckets with enabled Amazon S3 default encryption. You can add the S3 bucket to the backup infrastructure and use it as a target location for image-level backup

Since I have decided to enable S3 Object Lock, versioning needs to be enabled as well. Acknowledge the enabling of S3 Object Lock.

Lastly, click on the “Create Bucket” button as shown below.

You have now successfully created your bucket in S3.

Note: Storage Lens provides visibility into storage usage and activity trends at the organisation or account level, with drill-downs such as AWS Region, Storage Lens groups, or prefixes.

Note: There are no limits on the number of files you can store in a bucket.

I hope you found this guide on “Backup Repository: How to Create Amazon S3 buckets” very useful. Please feel free to leave a comment below.