Backing up the Amazon RDS

The RDS Backup and Restore will be done every three months or quarter by default.

Each Backup and Restore operation will include the following information:

The Environment used for backup and restore.
Instance name.
Instance Size.
Time taken for restoring
Time taken for backing up
Assignee.

Procedure of Creating a Backup

Prerequisites: Amazon RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your DB cluster, backing up the entire DB cluster and not just individual databases. When you create a DB cluster snapshot, you need to identify which DB cluster you are going to back up, and then give your DB cluster snapshot a name so you can restore from it later. The amount of time it takes to create a DB cluster snapshot varies with the size your databases. Since the snapshot includes the entire storage volume, the size of files, such as temporary files, also affects the amount of time it takes to create the snapshot.

Steps:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.
In the navigation pane, choose Databases.
In the list of DB instances, choose a writer instance for the DB cluster.
Choose Actions, and then choose Take snapshot. The Take DB Snapshot window appears.
Enter the name of the DB cluster snapshot in the Snapshot name box.

Choose Take Snapshot.

Test Cases:

In QA Environment we tested the backup of an Aurora DB instance with 76 GB of data and it took around 1 minute to complete.

Procedure of Restoring the Backup

Prerequisites:

When you restore the DB cluster, you provide the name of the DB cluster snapshot to restore from, and then provide a name for the new DB cluster that is created from the restore. You can't restore from a DB cluster snapshot to an existing DB cluster; a new DB cluster is created when you restore.
Parameter Group Considerations: We recommend that you retain the parameter group for any DB cluster snapshots you create, so that you can associate your restored DB cluster with the correct parameter group. You can specify the parameter group when you restore the DB cluster.
Security Group Considerations: When you restore a DB cluster, the default security group is associated with the restored cluster by default. As soon as the restore is complete and your new DB cluster is available, you can associate any custom security groups used by the snapshot you restored from. You must apply these changes by modifying the DB cluster with the RDS console, the AWS CLI modify-db-cluster command, or the ModifyDBCluster Amazon RDS API operation.

Steps:

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/
In the navigation pane, choose Snapshots.
Choose the DB cluster snapshot that you want to restore from.
For Actions, choose Restore Snapshot.
Parameters that you need to configure are:

DB Engine
DB Engine Version
DB Instance Class
DB Instance Identifier
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Subnet group
Public accessibility
Availability zone
Database Port
DB parameter group
DB cluster parameter group
IAM DB authentication
Backup
Encryption
Log Exports
Maintenance

Choose Restore DB Instance.

Test Cases:

In QA Environment we restored an Aurora DB instance with 76 GB of data and it took around 30 minutes to complete.

Step-by-Step Guide to Restore AWS RDS Point In Time

This article will walk you through the steps needed to restore a DynamoDB table to a specific point in time.

You can restore a DB instance to a point in time using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

From Console:

To restore a DB instance to a specified time

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.
In the navigation pane, choose Automated backups.

The automated backups are displayed on the Current Region tab.

Choose the DB instance that you want to restore.
For Actions, choose Restore to point in time.

The Restore to point in time window appears.

Choose Latest restorable time to restore to the latest possible time, or choose Custom to choose a time.

If you choose Custom, enter the date and time to which you want to restore the instance.

For DB instance identifier, enter the name of the target restored DB instance. The name must be unique.
Choose other options as needed, such as DB instance class, storage, and whether you want to use storage autoscaling.

For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

Choose Restore to point in time.

Conclusion

The Point-In-Time Recovery feature in DynamoDB provides an efficient and reliable mechanism to protect and restore your data. Whether you're safeguarding against human error or system failures, you can swiftly restore your data to the state it was in before the undesired event. Keep in mind that although the restored table does not replace the existing table, it's a new table that you can use to recover your data. Therefore, understanding and using this feature effectively can contribute significantly to your data management and recovery strategy on AWS DynamoDB.