Transitioning from EFS-to-EFS backup solution to AWS Backup service

adg-keith,

Thanks for the feedback - we're glad that you find EFS IA and AWS Backup to offer a simpler user experience!

With respect to the EFS-to-EFS backup solution: the CloudFormation template typically creates your backup file system as part of deploying the stack. With CloudFormation's default behavior, if you delete the stack, it will delete any resources created by the stack, including your backup file system. You can follow the instructions in this guide to change the CloudFormation behavior and retain any resources created when you tear down your stack: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/delete-cf-stack-retain-resources/. We recommend first testing these steps using a different CloudFormation stack than the one that you're using to back up your file systems.

You can apply a lifecycle management policy to your file systems at any time, and any files that are eligible given the policy you choose (for example, files that haven't been accessed for 14 days) will immediately begin to move to EFS IA.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

--Joe
Amazon EFS team

Thanks for the reply.

Any issue with just disabling the cloudwatch rule which triggers the backup until I have more time to handle the removal of the stack? Wasn't sure if there was a better way to just turn it off.

I didn't want to turn on the lifecycle policy until the efs-to-efs setup was disabled since I figured it would potentially hit the IA files and cause additional costs. Just a guess on my part though and could be wrong about that.

Yes, disabling the CloudWatch rule is a good way to cancel the scheduled backups inside the backup solution.

For AWS Backup, you are not charged for data access to files in EFS IA that are performed as part of the activity of backing up your file system.

Let us know if we can help with any other questions.

Figured I would follow up with my findings to help anyone who comes across this in the future with a similar question.

Make sure you remove the EFS-to-EFS backup security group from your source file system before removing the CloudFormation stack otherwise it will fail to delete. Seems obvious now, but since I didn't set that up I didn't even think about it.

The backup file system is set to be retained during deletion in the CloudFormation template by default so I didn't have to worry about that getting removed.