Copying a snapshot to another Amazon Region
You can configure Amazon Redshift to automatically copy snapshots (automated or manual) for a cluster to another Amazon Region. When a snapshot is created in the cluster's primary Amazon Region, it's copied to a secondary Amazon Region. The two Amazon Regions are known respectively as the source Amazon Region and destination Amazon Region. If you store a copy of your snapshots in another Amazon Region, you can restore your cluster from recent data if anything affects the primary Amazon Region. You can configure your cluster to copy snapshots to only one destination Amazon Region at a time. For a list of Amazon Redshift Regions, see Regions and endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.
When you enable Amazon Redshift to automatically copy snapshots to another Amazon Region, you specify the destination Amazon Region to copy the snapshots to. For automated snapshots, you can also specify the retention period to keep them in the destination Amazon Region. After an automated snapshot is copied to the destination Amazon Region and it reaches the retention time period there, it's deleted from the destination Amazon Region. Doing this keeps your snapshot usage low. To keep the automated snapshots for a shorter or longer time in the destination Amazon Region, change this retention period.
The retention period that you set for automated snapshots that are copied to the destination Amazon Region is separate from the retention period for automated snapshots in the source Amazon Region. The default retention period for copied snapshots is seven days. That seven-day period applies only to automated snapshots. In both the source and destination Amazon Regions, manual snapshots are deleted at the end of the snapshot retention period or when you manually delete them.
You can disable automatic snapshot copy for a cluster at any time. When you disable this feature, snapshots are no longer copied from the source Amazon Region to the destination Amazon Region. Any automated snapshots copied to the destination Amazon Region are deleted as they reach the retention period limit, unless you create manual snapshot copies of them. These manual snapshots, and any manual snapshots that were copied from the destination Amazon Region, are kept in the destination Amazon Region until you manually delete them.
To change the destination Amazon Region that you copy snapshots to, first disable the automatic copy feature. Then re-enable it, specifying the new destination Amazon Region.
After a snapshot is copied to the destination Amazon Region, it becomes active and available for restoration purposes.
To copy snapshots for Amazon KMS–encrypted clusters to another Amazon Region, create a grant for Amazon Redshift to use a customer managed key in the destination Amazon Region. Then choose that grant when you enable copying of snapshots in the source Amazon Region. For more information about configuring snapshot copy grants, see Copying Amazon KMS–encrypted snapshots to another Amazon Region.