Transform AWS Backup Data into Visual Insights with Amazon QuickSight

Introduction

Organizations managing multiple AWS resources need a robust backup strategy and clear visibility into their backup operations. While AWS Backup provides centralized backup management, organizations often struggle to gain quick insights into their backup operations across various resources. This post demonstrates how to implement AWS Backup for your resources and create insightful dashboards using Amazon QuickSight to monitor your backup operations effectively.

In this post, I will demonstrate how to leverage AWS Backup reports to create insightful visualizations using Amazon QuickSight. AWS Backup automatically generates detailed reports of your backup jobs, which are stored in S3 buckets in CSV format. By connecting these reports to QuickSight, you can create interactive dashboards to monitor your backup compliance, track success rates, and visualize backup storage consumption across different resource types. This solution helps you gain valuable insights into your backup operations, identify potential issues, and ensure compliance with your backup policies. Through step-by-step instructions, you'll learn how to configure AWS Backup reports, set up QuickSight datasets using S3 manifests, and create meaningful visualizations that transform raw backup data into actionable insights for your organization.

Prerequisites

• An AWS account will be needed for this tutorial. For more information on using AWS Backup for the first time, view the AWS Backup documentation.
• An AWS QuickSight will be needed to create datasets and dashboard in AWS QuickSight
• One or more Amazon EBS volumes (including those that are free tier eligible). For the pricing of volumes not in the free tier, refer to the Amazon EBS pricing page. For AWS Backup pricing, refer to the AWS Backup pricing page.
• IAM roles used by AWS Backup to create a backup of the Amazon EBS volume.
• If a subsequent role is not created, then the default IAM role can be used – AWSBackupDefaultRole.

Solution Overview This solution combines AWS Backup's comprehensive backup management capabilities with Amazon QuickSight's visualization features to provide:

• Centralized backup management for AWS resources
• Automated backup reporting
• Visual insights into backup operations
• Compliance monitoring
• Cost optimization opportunities

Implementation Steps Step 1: Creating a Backup Plan Go to AWS Console and to AWS Backup console, as shown in Figure 1. Start by creating a backup plan that defines your backup schedule and retention policies:

1. Navigate to the AWS Backup console and click "Create backup plan"

Fig 1: Select AWS Backup from Services

Fig 2: Go to the Backup plans tab from the left-hand side of AWS Backup console

2. Choose "Start with a template" option

Fig 3: Landing page for Create backup plan workflow

3. Select "Daily-35day-Retention" from the Templates dropdown 4. Enter a backup plan name (e.g., "DynamoDB_Backup_2025") 5. Under Backup rules, you'll see "DailyBackups" rule configured with the Default vault and click Create plan

Fig 4: Select the Daily-35day-Retention template and specify a name for your Backup plan

6. You should observe a green banner confirmation that your backup plan has been created successfully, as shown in figure 5. Then you are directed to assign your currently unprotected AWS resources to the plan.

Fig 5: Green banner confirmation

Step 2: Assigning Resources to the Backup Plan After creating the backup plan, assign resources that need to be backed up:

1. Enter a resource assignment name (e.g., "EBS_Snapshot")
2. For IAM role, select "Default role"
3. Under Resource selection: a. Choose "Include specific resource types" b. Select desired resource types (example EBS and RDS) c. For EBS: Select "All volumes" (as shown in Figure 6)

Fig 6: Assign resources workflow as part of creating your backup plan

You have finished creating a backup policy to protect your EBS volumes from accidental deletion or any other data loss events. You should observe a green confirmation banner which shows that resource assignment has been created successfully, as shown in Figure 7.

Fig 7: Summary of backup plan with Backup rules and Resource assignments

Step 3: Configuring Backup Reports Set up backup reports to track your backup activities:

1. Navigate to the Backup Audit Manager section
2. Click "Create report plan"

Fig 8: Go to the Reports tab from the left-hand side of AWS Backup console

3. Select from available report templates: a. Backup jobs report

Fig 9: Select the Backup jobs report from the drop-down

Reports automatically refresh every 24 hours and provide comprehensive insights into your backup operations.

4. Fill all the details in the Create report plan workflow and select an S3 bucket for the delivery of the report, as shown in Figure 10

Fig 10: Create a backup report plan workflow

The completed backup reports will be available in the Reports console. You can click view report to check the detailed status of the backup job.

Fig 11: Completed backup jobs in AWS Reports console

Step 5: Creating an S3 Manifest file

1. Create a manifest file which is in JSON format
2. Amazon QuickSight manifest files use the following JSON format.

{
    "fileLocations": [
        {
            "URIPrefixes": [
                "s3://my-backup-bucket/Backup/<accountid>/us-east-1/2025/01/"
            ]
        }
    ],
    "globalUploadSettings": {
        "format": "CSV",
        "delimiter": ",",
        "textqualifier": "\"",
        "containsHeader": "true"
    }
}

3. Save the manifest file in the same S3 bucket where all the AWS backup reports are getting saved. Figure 11 shows the manifest file saved in the S3 bucket. Note the S3 URI

Fig 12: S3 manifest file

Step 4: Enable the Amazon S3 access for Amazon QuickSight

1. Launch Amazon QuickSight from the AWS Console
2. At the upper right, choose your user name, and then choose Manage QuickSight
3. Choose Security & Permission
4. Under QuickSight success to AWS services, choose Add or remove
5. A screen will appear where you can select Amazon S3
6. Select the buckets that you want Amazon QuickSight to be able to access
7. Click Finish
8. Click Save

Step 5: Creating an AWS QuickSight dashboard

1. Launch AWS QuickSight from the AWS console
2. Click on Datasets and then New Dataset as shown in Figure 13

Fig 13: Creating Datasets in AWS QuickSight console

3. Click on S3 in the Datasets console

Fig 14: Creating a Dataset from S3

4. Provide a name of the dataset 5. Paste the S3 URI of the manifest file and click Connect

Fig 15: Configuring new Dataset in AWS QuickSight

After that, the dataset can be used to create AWS QuickSight dashboard to gain more visibility into backup jobs.

Step 5: Cost Considerations When implementing this solution, consider the following costs:

• AWS Backup pricing based on backup storage
• Amazon QuickSight subscription fees
• S3 storage costs for backup reports

Conclusion

By combining AWS Backup with Amazon QuickSight, organizations can achieve:

• Streamlined backup management
• Enhanced visibility into backup operations
• Better compliance monitoring
• Data-driven decision making for backup strategies

The solution helps organizations maintain robust backup operations while providing clear insights into their backup status and compliance position.

Clean-up Steps To avoid ongoing charges, remember to:

1. Delete unused backup plans
2. Remove unnecessary report plans
3. Clean up QuickSight datasets and dashboards
4. Delete unused S3 objects