Explanation
Why the waste happens and who it affects.
However, AWS Backup does not deduplicate data across different resources or backup plans, and not every resource type or tier is incremental. Amazon Aurora is incremental only through continuous backups, DynamoDB backups with advanced features are always full, and EBS backups become full copies when transitioned to cold storage (EBS Snapshots Archive). Multiple backup plans covering the same resource, copies to other Regions or accounts, and long retention can also keep several copies of mostly unchanged data. Over time, this leads to higher-than-necessary storage usage and cost - especially in environments with frequent backup schedules or large data volumes that change minimally between backups.
Billing model
The pricing dimensions that drive this cost.
Backups are billed per GB-month of stored backup data. This includes both warm storage (primary backup copies) and cold storage (if lifecycle policies transition backups to cold tiers, with a 90-day minimum). For resource types that support incremental backups, only changed data adds storage after the first full backup. Full-copy backups, backups that become full copies in cold storage, cross-Region or cross-account copies, and overlapping plans add cost for data that has not changed.
How to detect
5 checks to find it in your estate.
- Review high-frequency backup schedules (e.g., daily or hourly) across services like EBS, FSx, and RDS
- Analyze backup size growth relative to underlying data changes
- Identify resource types whose backups are stored as full copies (e.g., EBS backups moved to cold storage, DynamoDB backups with advanced features, Aurora snapshot backups)
- Check for repetitive full backups that duplicate mostly unchanged data
- Assess cold storage lifecycle policies, which lower the per-GB rate but turn incremental EBS backups into full copies and can trigger a new warm full backup if the full backup is transitioned too soon
How to fix
5 ways to remove the waste.
- Where supported, leverage third-party backup tools with CBT and deduplication (e.g., Commvault, Veeam, Druva)
- Reevaluate backup frequency and retention periods based on RPO/RTO requirements
- Consolidate redundant backup plans across environments and services
- Implement tighter backup scoping to exclude unchanged or non-critical volumes
- Monitor backup growth trends to detect inefficient accumulation of redundant data
Documentation
Vendor references for pricing and configuration.