One of the major advantages of RDS is that backing up your database is a piece of cake!
Back up Your Instance
By default, your server is backed up every day for the previous seven days. You don’t even need to do anything!
However, if you want to run a backup manually (e.g., before doing a big transaction), you just need to select the server and the action “Take snapshot”:
You’ll just be asked to name your snapshot so that you’ll be able to find it again easily. You could call it “before-user-migration” for example, if you are planning a complex user migration project.
Locate Your Snapshots
Your snapshots can be found in the “Snapshots” menu. I know, who’d have thought?!
Restore a Snapshot
To restore a snapshot, there are a number of options:
In “Snapshots,” select a snapshot, go to the dropdown menu and click on “Restore snapshot.” Your server will be restored to the state it was in at the time you took the snapshot.
In “Instances,” select your instance, then in the dropdown menu, click on “Restore to point in time.” This method is much more precise and means you can take your server back to a specific point to the nearest second. RDS actually performs continuous backups.
Let’s Recap!
You can perform manual backups (snapshots) on RDS Servers as well as automatic backups.
A snapshot is a copy of the database’s hard disk, which means you can access your data if there’s a glitch on the RDS server.
When you restore an RDS server from a snapshot, this creates a new RDS server with a new endpoint.
Now that we’ve explored the main functionality of RDS, a relational database storage service, we’re now going to look at another type of storage that is a lot less structured. Well, actually, not at all!
