Limitations

The following article presents limitations of Amazon RDS Plugin.

When the export to S3 function is not used, Amazon RDS plugin will not store actual data in Bacula volumes, as it will merely function as a Snapshot manager within the AWS cloud.

In instances where a new Amazon RDS instance or cluster is desired for restoring purposes, the source Snapshot must be present in the Amazon RDS service to be selected for use.

Point-in-Time Recovery function is also based on the existing Amazon RDS configuration and previous snapshots. To use this feature, is necessary to enable the Amazon RDS “Automated Backups” function and establish a retention period, even if other snapshots are managed through Bacula Enterprise Amazon RDS Plugin. With that function enabled, RDS service will upload transaction logs for database instances to Amazon S3 every five minutes. To see the most recent restorable time for a database instance, one can employ the .query command with the instance parameter command and examine the value returned in the LatestRestorableTime field.

The export function to S3, and consequently, the backup with the plugin using Apache Parquet format, contains only the data of the protected databases. Indexes and any additional information are excluded from both the export and the backup stored in Bacula.

Cloud Costs

As you may already be aware, storing data in the cloud incurs additional expenses.

Data transfer needs to be considered as well. While uploading data is typically free or incurs minimal costs, downloading it is usually not free, and charges will apply based on each operation and the volume of data transferred.

Amazon employs a pricing model for each of its storage tiers. Additionally, costs will differ depending on the region you use. More information are to be found here:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Exporting an Amazon RDS backup to S3 and subsequently downloading it will result in certain charges. Keep it in mind and schedule this operation according to a frequency that aligns with your needs and convenience.