Introduction to backups - Amazon Relational Database Service
Backup storage
Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Introduction to backups

Amazon RDS creates and saves automated backups of your DB instance or Multi-AZ DB cluster during the backup window of your DB instance. RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your DB instance, backing up the entire DB instance and not just individual databases. RDS saves the automated backups of your DB instance according to the backup retention period that you specify. If necessary, you can recover your DB instance to any point in time during the backup retention period.

Automated backups follow these rules:

  • Your DB instance must be in the available state for automated backups to occur. Automated backups don't occur while your DB instance is in a state other than available, for example, storage_full.

  • Automated backups don't occur while a DB snapshot copy is running in the same Amazon Web Services Region for the same database.

You can also back up your DB instance manually by creating a DB snapshot. For more information about manually creating a DB snapshot, see Creating a DB snapshot for a Single-AZ DB instance for Amazon RDS.

The first snapshot of a DB instance contains the data for the full database. Subsequent snapshots of the same database are incremental, which means that only the data that has changed after your most recent snapshot is saved.

You can copy both automatic and manual DB snapshots, and share manual DB snapshots. For more information about copying a DB snapshot, see Copying a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS. For more information about sharing a DB snapshot, see Sharing a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS.

Backup storage

Your Amazon RDS backup storage for each Amazon Web Services Region is composed of the automated backups and manual DB snapshots for that Region. Total backup storage space equals the sum of the storage for all backups in that Region. Moving a DB snapshot to another Region increases the backup storage in the destination Region. Backups are stored in Amazon S3.

If you choose to retain automated backups when you delete a DB instance, the automated backups are saved for the full retention period. If you don't choose Retain automated backups when you delete a DB instance, all automated backups are deleted with the DB instance. After they are deleted, the automated backups can't be recovered. If you choose to have Amazon RDS create a final DB snapshot before it deletes your DB instance, you can use that to recover your DB instance. Optionally, you can use a previously created manual snapshot. Manual snapshots are not deleted. You can have up to 100 manual snapshots per Region.