Backup Types

Full backups

Incremental backups

All data in an instance is backed up.

Only data changes within a certain period of time are backed up.

Yes

Yes

• You can specify the number of days for which automated backups can be retained. If you shorten the retention period, the new backup policy takes effect for existing backups.
• Manual backups will not be deleted until you delete them manually.

Incremental backups will be deleted along with automated full backups.

• A full backup is to back up all data of your DB instance in the current point of time.
• You can use a full backup to restore the complete data generated when the backup was created.
• Full backups can be created automatically or manually.

• RDS automatically backs up data updated since the last incremental backup every 5 minutes.
• Restoring data from incremental backups relies on the most recent full backup, as shown in Figure 1, so the most recent full backup that exceeds the retention period will not be deleted to ensure successful restoration.

  Figure 1 Incremental data restoration

  
  

Click the target instance name. On the Backups & Restorations page, click the Full Backups tab and check the backup size.

Click the target instance name. On the Backups & Restorations page, click the Incremental Backups tab and check the backup size.

Automated backups

Manual backups

• You can set an automated backup policy on the console, and the system will back up your instance data based on the time window and backup cycle you set in the backup policy and will store the backups for the retention period you specified.
• Automated backups cannot be manually deleted. To delete them, you can adjust the retention period specified in your automated backup policy. Retained backups (including full and incremental backups) will be automatically deleted at the end of the retention period.

• Manual backups are user-initiated full backups of your DB instance. They are retained until you delete them manually.
• Regularly backing up your DB instance is recommended, so if your DB instance fails or data is corrupted, you can restore it using backups.

Yes

Yes

Automated backups are retained for the number of days you specified.

The retention period ranges from 1 to 3660 days.

Manual backups are always retained until you delete them manually.

See Configuring a Same-Region Backup Policy.

See Creating a Manual Backup.