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Copying RDS Snapshots Between Regions

In our previous posts, I showed you how to copy your DB and Aurora snapshots to ensure they are preserved beyond the lifetime of your RDS instance. However, those copies were simply second copies in the same region as the original. In this post, I’ll show you how to copy your RDS snapshots to a second region for extra protection. Please note that I will restrict this post to unencrypted snapshots. Copying encrypted snapshots is more involved, so I’ll show that in a separate post.

Encrypting an Unencrypted RDS Snapshot

RDS snapshots can be unencrypted or they can be encrypted at rest. Today, best practice is to use encryption-at-rest on your RDS instances and clusters, and to encrypt your RDS snapshots. When you create an RDS snapshot from an RDS instance or cluster, the resulting snapshot will be encrypted if the source instance or cluster is encrypted. But if the source is not encrypted, then your RDS snapshot is not encrypted. When you create an RDS snapshot, you are not given the option to encrypt it.

Daily AMI Images Are Key to Disaster Recoverability

As companies, big or small, move into the cloud, it’s becoming more and more important to ensure that data is protected. There are numerous options for data resilience, including (but not limited to), Amazon EBS and Amazon S3. What you choose to use depends on your business requirements. Amazon EBS volumes are supposed to be redundant within an availability zone, however they have been known to fail, both due to technical issues, and by human error.

Patching Spectre and Meltdown is Easy with AWS Systems Manager

Most likely you have heard about Spectre and Meltdown by now. It’s all over the news. As an IT or DevOps engineer, it’s now your job to patch your EC2 instance operating systems. This task can be “fun” if you need to SSH/RDP into every EC2 instance and apply patches. Or, it can be truly fun if you decide to use AWS Systems Manager to apply patches to your OS.

Amazon Athena vs. Redshift

Modern cloud-based data services have revolutionized the way companies manage their data. Tools such as Amazon Athena and Amazon Redshift have changed data warehouse technology, catering for a move towards interactive, real-time, analytical solutions. Both Amazon Athena and Redshift offer their own unique benefits and use cases. Athena provides a cheaper and more portable way to query data while Redshift offers unrivalled performance and scalability.