Backup and restore is the simplest and the most common option used in traditional data centers. The process of taking tape-based backups and doing restores from tapes is familiar to most organizations. However, there are some simpler and often faster options available as AWS services. Amazon S3 is an ideal storage medium for quick backups and restores for your cloud and on-premise applications. Another storage option is to use Amazon Glacier for your longer term backups.

There are several options available for hybrid architectures where your data center extends into the cloud. You can use Direct Connect facility to set up a high throughput and low-latency connection between your data center and AWS cloud for your backups. In case your data volumes are on a terabyte scale, then Amazon also provides a facility where you can ship your data on portable storage media and Amazon will use their high-speed internal network to load it on S3 for you. This is often a more economical option to load your data than upgrading your network connections and transferring massive volumes of data over the internet. Another AWS option is to use the AWS Storage Gateway, an on-premise software appliance, to store your data on AWS S3 or AWS Glacier storage. In cases of disaster, you can choose to launch your workloads within the AWS environment or your own data center environment.