📋 Backup and Recovery Cheat Sheet

SOA-C03 reliability scenarios often ask how to meet backup, restore, retention, and disaster recovery requirements.

Backup Planning

  • AWS Backup centralizes backup plans across supported AWS services.
  • Backup vaults store recovery points and can use vault lock for stronger retention controls.
  • Lifecycle rules transition backups to cold storage when supported.
  • Cross-account and cross-Region backup copies support resilience and compliance needs.

Recovery Targets

  • RPO defines acceptable data loss; RTO defines acceptable time to restore service.
  • Automated RDS backups support point-in-time recovery within the retention window.
  • Manual snapshots remain until deleted and are useful for long-term retention.
  • Restore testing validates that backups meet the business target, not just that backups exist.

Exam Cues

  • Need central policy across accounts: AWS Backup with Organizations support.
  • Need immutable retention: evaluate vault lock or S3 Object Lock depending on the data.
  • Need fast database HA: Multi-AZ is usually better than restoring from backup.
  • Need cross-Region recovery: copy snapshots or backups to the recovery Region.

Practice Backup & Recovery Questions

Put your knowledge to the test with practice questions.

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