Restoring an Amazon EFS file system - Amazon Backup
Use the Amazon Backup console to restore an Amazon EFS recovery pointUse the Amazon Backup API, CLI, or SDK to restore Amazon EFS recovery pointsDisabling automatic backups in Amazon EFS
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).

Restoring an Amazon EFS file system

If you are restoring an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) instance, you can perform a full restore or an item-level restore.

Full Restore

When you perform a full restore, the entire file system is restored.

Amazon Backup does not support destructive restores with Amazon EFS. A destructive restore is when a restored file system deletes or overwrites the source or existing file system. Instead, Amazon Backup restores your file system to a recovery directory off of the root directory.

Item-Level Restore

When you perform an item-level restore, Amazon Backup restores a specific file or directory. You must specify the path relative to the file system root. For example, if the file system is mounted to /user/home/myname/efs and the file path is user/home/myname/efs/file1, you enter /file1. Paths are case sensitive. Wildcard characters and regex strings are not supported. Your path may be different from what is in the host if the file system is mounted using an access point.

You can select up to 10 items when you use the console to perform an EFS restore. There is no item limit when you use CLI to restore; however, there is a 200 KB limit on the length of the restore metadata that can be passed.

You can restore those items to either a new or existing file system. Either way, Amazon Backup creates a new Amazon EFS directory (aws-backup-restore_datetime) off of the root directory to contain the items. The full hierarchy of the specified items is preserved in the recovery directory. For example, if directory A contains subdirectories B, C, and D, Amazon Backup retains the hierarchical structure when A, B, C, and D are recovered. Regardless of whether you perform an Amazon EFS item-level restore to an existing file system or to a new file system, each restore attempt creates a new recovery directory off of the root directory to contain the restored files. If you attempt multiple restores for the same path, several directories containing the restored items might exist.

Note

If you only keep one weekly backup, you can only restore to the state of the file system at the time you took that backup. You can't restore to prior incremental backups.

Use the Amazon Backup console to restore an Amazon EFS recovery point

To restore an Amazon EFS file system

  1. Open the Amazon Backup console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/backup.

  2. Your EFS backup vault receives the access policy Deny backup:StartRestoreJob upon creation. If you are restoring your backup vault for the first time, you must change your access policy as follows.

    1. Choose Backup vaults.

    2. Choose the backup vault containing the recovery point you would like to restore.

    3. Scroll down to the vault Access policy

    4. If present, delete backup:StartRestoreJob from the Statement. Do this by choosing Edit, deleting backup:StartRestoreJob, then choosing Save policy.

  3. In the navigation pane, choose Protected resources and the EFS file system ID you want to restore.

  4. On the Resource details page, a list of recovery points for the selected file system ID is shown. To restore a file system, in the Backups pane, choose the radio button next to the recovery point ID of the file system. In the upper-right corner of the pane, choose Restore.

  5. Specify the restore parameters for your file system. The restore parameters you enter are specific to the resource type that you selected.

    You can perform a Full restore, which restores the entire file system. Or, you can restore specific files and directories using Item-level restore.

    • Choose the Full restore option to restore the file system in its entirety including all root level folders and files.

    • Choose the Item-level restore option to restore a specific file or directory. You can select and restore up to five items within your Amazon EFS.

      To restore a specific file or directory, you must specify the relative path related to the mount point. For example, if the file system is mounted to /user/home/myname/efs and the file path is user/home/myname/efs/file1, enter /file1. Paths are case sensitive and cannot contain special characters, wildcard characters, and regex strings.

      1. In the Item path text box, enter the path for your file or folder.

      2. Choose Add item to add additional files or directories. You can select and restore up to five items within your EFS file system.

  6. For Restore location

    • Choose Restore to directory in source file system if you want to restore to the source file system.

    • Choose Restore to a new file system if you want to restore to a different file system.

  7. For File system type

    • (Recommended) Choose Regional if you want to restore your file system across multiple Amazon Availability Zones.

    • Choose One Zone if you want to restore your file system to a single Availability Zone. Then, in the Availability Zone dropdown, choose the destination for your restore.

    For more information, see Managing Amazon EFS storage classes in the Amazon EFS User Guide.

  8. For Performance

    • If you chose to perform a Regional restore, choose either (Recommended) General purpose or Max I/O.

    • If you chose to perform a One Zone restore, you must choose (Recommended) General purpose. One Zone restores do not support Max I/O.

  9. For Enable encryption

    • Choose Enable encryption, if you want to encrypt your file system. KMS key IDs and aliases appear in the list after they have been created using the Amazon Key Management Service (Amazon KMS) console.

    • In the KMS key text box, choose the key you want to use from the list.

  10. For Restore role, choose the IAM role that Amazon Backup will assume for this restore.

    Note

    If the Amazon Backup default role is not present in your account, a Default role is created for you with the correct permissions. You can delete this default role or make it unusable.

  11. Choose Restore backup.

    The Restore jobs pane appears. A message at the top of the page provides information about the restore job.

    Note

    If you only keep one weekly backup, you can only restore to the state of the file system at the time you took that backup. You can't restore to prior incremental backups.

Use the Amazon Backup API, CLI, or SDK to restore Amazon EFS recovery points

Use StartRestoreJob. When restoring an Amazon EFS instance, you can restore an entire file system or specific files or directories. To restore Amazon EFS resources, you need the following information:

  • file-system-id — The ID of the Amazon EFS file system that is backed up by Amazon Backup. Returned in GetRecoveryPointRestoreMetadata. This is not required when a new file system is restored (this value is ignored if parameter newFileSystem is True).

  • Encrypted — A Boolean value that, if true, specifies that the file system is encrypted. If KmsKeyId is specified, Encrypted must be set to true.

  • KmsKeyId — Specifies the Amazon KMS key that is used to encrypt the restored file system.

  • PerformanceMode — Specifies the throughput mode of the file system.

  • CreationToken — A user-supplied value that ensures the uniqueness (idempotency) of the request.

  • newFileSystem — A Boolean value that, if true, specifies that the recovery point is restored to a new Amazon EFS file system.

  • ItemsToRestore — An array of up to five strings where each string is a file path. Use ItemsToRestore to restore specific files or directories rather than the entire file system. This parameter is optional.

You may also include aws:backup:request-id.

One Zone restores can be performed by including parameters:

"singleAzFilesystem": "true" 
"availabilityZoneName": "ap-northeast-3"

For more information about Amazon EFS configuration values, see create-file-system.

Disabling automatic backups in Amazon EFS

By default, Amazon EFS creates backups of data automatically. These backups are represented as recovery points in Amazon Backup. Attempts to remove the recovery point will result in an error message that notes there are insufficient privileges to perform the action.

It is best practice to keep this auto-backup active. Particularly in the case of accidental data deletion, this backup allows restoration of file system content to the date of the last recovery point created.

In the unlikely event you wish to turn these off, the access policy must be changed from "Effect": "Deny" to "Effect": "Allow". See the Amazon EFS User Guide for more information about turning automatic backups on or off.