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MIDASUS04-BP01 Design backup strategies that focus on critical data - Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens
Implementation guidanceKey AWS servicesResources

MIDASUS04-BP01 Design backup strategies that focus on critical data

Manufacturing data varies in criticality from essential production recipes and regulatory compliance records to temporary operational logs. Design backup strategies that prioritize truly valuable data while minimizing resource consumption.

Desired outcome: A data backup system that balances business continuity needs with sustainability goals, reducing storage requirements, energy consumption, and carbon footprint while maintaining manufacturing operational resilience.

Benefits of establishing this best practice:

  1. Reduced storage costs and energy consumption

  2. Lower carbon footprint from decreased data center resources

  3. Optimized network bandwidth usage

  4. Improved recovery time for truly critical manufacturing data

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Medium

Implementation guidance

  • Categorize data by importance (critical production recipes, compliance records, operational logs) to determine appropriate backup strategies for each category.

  • Establish tiered backup strategies based on data importance, with more frequent and comprehensive backups for critical data while implementing less resource intensive approaches for lower priority data.

  • Implement data compression, deduplication, and efficient formats to minimize storage footprint and processing requirements for backups across the data categories.

  • Store manufacturing data in AWS Regions closest to production facilities to reduce energy used for data transfer and improve access speeds for operational systems.

Implementation steps

  1. Data classification and assessment:

    • Conduct comprehensive data audits across Amazon EBS volumes, Amazon EFS file systems, and on-premises data connected through AWS Storage Gateway

    • Document recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) for each data category in AWS Backup

  2. Tiered backup strategy design:

    • Configure AWS Backup plans with different frequencies for critical EBS volumes, EFS file systems, and Storage Gateway volumes

    • Implement lifecycle policies in Amazon S3 to automatically transition infrequently accessed backups to cold storage classes

  3. Storage optimization configuration:

    • Enable compression and deduplication features in AWS Backup for EBS snapshots and EFS backups

    • Configure Amazon EFS Infrequent Access storage class for rarely accessed file data

    • Implement AWS Storage Gateway with deduplication enabled to reduce backup data footprint

  4. Geographic distribution setup:

    • Deploy EBS and EFS backups to AWS Regions closest to primary usage locations

    • Configure AWS Storage Gateway to cache frequently accessed data locally while storing backups in energy-efficient regions

  5. Performance monitoring:

    • Create CloudWatch dashboards to track backup storage utilization across EBS, EFS, and Storage Gateway

    • Establish quarterly review processes using AWS Trusted Advisor storage recommendations

Key AWS services

  • AWS Backup

  • Amazon S3

  • Amazon Glacier

  • Amazon EBS

  • Amazon EFS

  • AWS Storage Gateway

  • Amazon CloudWatch

  • AWS Trusted Advisor

Resources