Restoring offline RDS backup

Question

I have a client who wants to keep a local backup of their data. If I download the S3 snapshot (which is in Parquet format), would I then be able to upload this to another bucket and use that as a snapshot to restore from?

For technical reasons, I'm not able to interface with the database and use the mysqldump tool.

Accepted Answer

From my knowledge is that you can't natively restore from Parquet in AWS.

I know for example in MS SQL you can backup natively a full MS SQL Backup .BAK to an S3 bucket which you can later restore.
This would be the knowning way to use an intergrated backup..

You may be able to achieve the same thing with a different database format.

Answer

If you start with understanding the process to restore, you can see what methods might work for saving / downloading locally. 
Here's an example of restoring a mySQL backup from On-premise to RDS. It contains a list of limitations and recommendations from importing data from S3 to RDS which is helpful. The documentation below focuses from on-prem to RDS, but since you're asking for the backup to be downloaded and stored locally, many of the same limitations and recommendations apply.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/MySQL.Procedural.Importing.html

Here's another answer on backing up the data using mysqldump. I know you said you are not able to interface with the database to run the tool, however it is the tool for the job. Running it on an EC2 instance or MySQLWorkbench are options.

https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/rds-mysql-db-backup

Restoring offline RDS backup

Relevant content