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AWS Backup is a service that helps you centrally manage backups across multiple Amazon storage services, including EFS, DynamoDB, RDS, and AWS snapshots performed via EBS. AWS Backup pricing is composed of two elements—storage costs and data transfer costs, and we’ll help you understand how to estimate and calculate your total expenditure.
In this post, we’ll explain the basics of the AWS Backup service, break down its pricing and show examples. In addition, we’ll show how NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP can help you reduce your Amazon storage costs.
In this article, you will learn:- What is AWS Backup
- AWS Backup pricing components
- Pricing examples
- AWS Backup with Cloud Volumes ONTAP
What is the AWS Backup Service?
In 2019 Amazon launched a dedicated service named AWS Backup that automates and manages backups across multiple AWS services. AWS lets you backup data from Elastic File System (EFS), DynamoDB, RDS, and EBS, and also supports the AWS Storage Gateway, allowing it to integrate with on-premises storage.
AWS Backup lets you define new backups using the AWS Console, or programmatically using a JSON file. It uses three related concepts that help you define your backup strategy:
- Backup rules—schedule, frequency, and backup window for specified resources
- Lifecycle rules—define what happens with old backups
- Vaults—a group of backups, encrypted by AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
It’s important to realize that AWS backup does not directly perform backups. Rather, it integrates with the existing backup mechanisms for each Amazon service, and centrally manages backups for you.
What does AWS backup manage across the different storage services?
- Amazon EFS—backup of EFS file systems
- Amazon DynamoDB—backup of DynamoDB tables
- Amazon EBS—EBS snapshots
- Amazon RDS—backup of entire RDS databases
- AWS Storage Gateway—backup of Storage Gateway volumes
AWS Backup Pricing Components
AWS backup is priced according to the amount of storage your backups use, and the volume of data you restore when needed.
Note that the prices listed below are correct at the time of this writing, but AWS pricing is subject to frequent change. For the latest pricing see the official pricing page. Also see NetApp’s AWS calculator to estimate your Amazon storage costs and compare different storage services.
Backup Pricing
The following table shows the price per GB-month for backup storage, per Amazon storage service and Amazon region. We show three example regions—US East, Frankfurt and Seoul.
The AWS Backup service provides two storage tiers for backup data: warm storage and cold storage. All prices below are for warm storage, except for EFS which also supports cold storage at a lower price range.
| Backup for... | US East (N. Virginia) | EU (Frankfurt) | Asia Pacific (Seoul) |
| Amazon EFS | $0.05 | $0.06 | $0.055 |
| Amazon EFS (cold storage) | $0.01 | $0.012 | $0.011 |
| Amazon EBS | $0.05 | $0.054 | $0.05 |
| Amazon RDS | $0.095 | $0.103 | $0.095 |
| Amazon DynamoDB | $0.10 | $0.1224 | $0.1083 |
| AWS Storage Gateway Volume | $0.05 | $0.054 | $0.05 |
Restore Pricing
The following table shows the price per GB transferred (note that restore operations are priced per GB transferred, unlike backup which is priced per GB-month), across the same three regions.
Again, all prices are shown for warm storage, except for EFS which offers both warm and cold storage.
| Resource Type | US East (N. Virginia) | EU (Frankfurt) | Asia Pacific (Seoul) |
| Amazon EFS | $0.02 per GB | $0.024 per GB | $0.022 per GB |
| Amazon EFS (cold storage) | $0.03 | $0.036 | $0.033 |
| Amazon EBS | Free | Free | Free |
| Amazon RDS | Free | Free | Free |
| Amazon DynamoDB | $0.15 per GB | $0.1836 per GB | $0.16245 per GB |
| AWS Storage Gateway Volume | Free | Free | Free |
AWS Backup Pricing Examples
The following tables can help you understand how much AWS backup will cost for some example scenarios. We use prices for the US East region.
Backup for EFS file system
| Backup Period | Backups Capacity | EFS Restores | Total Cost |
| 1 Month | 10 GB | 10 per month X 1 GB | $0.7 |
| 6 Months | 50 GB | 10 per month X 5 GB | $21 |
| 12 Months | 100 GB | 10 per month X 10 GB | $84 |
Backup for EBS volumes
| Backup Period | Backups Capacity | EBS Restores | Total Cost |
| 1 Month | 10 GB | 10 per month X 1 GB | $0.05 |
| 6 Months | 50 GB | 10 per month X 5 GB | $15 |
| 12 Months | 100 GB | 10 per month X 10 GB | $60 |
AWS Backup with Cloud Volumes ONTAP
NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the leading enterprise-grade storage management solution, delivers secure, proven storage management services on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes ONTAP supports up to a capacity of 368TB, and supports various use cases such as file services, databases, DevOps or any other enterprise workload.
In particular, Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides storage efficiency features, including thin provisioning, data compression, and deduplication, reducing the storage footprint and costs by up to 70%.
