AWS Backup cross-region and cross-account snapshot copying not available

The information you're referencing appears to be incorrect. According to the current AWS Backup documentation, there are specific limitations for Amazon RDS and Aurora when it comes to cross-region and cross-account copying.

AWS Backup only supports automating either cross-account or cross-region copies for Amazon RDS and Aurora snapshots, but not both simultaneously in a single step. This limitation exists due to how these services create their encryption keys. For other supported resource types, AWS Backup does allow automating a sequence of both cross-account and cross-Region copies.

Additionally, copying Multi-AZ DB cluster snapshots is not supported at all.

If you're trying to copy RDS snapshots created by AWS Backup to another region, you might also notice that the copy button is disabled in the RDS console. This is because AWS Backup manages its own recovery points separately from standard RDS snapshots, and you would need to use AWS Backup itself to create copies of these recovery points.

For your use case, you would need to set up a two-step process: either copy across accounts first and then to another region, or copy across regions first and then to another account.
Sources
Backup and tag copy - AWS Backup
Take Rds Snapshot through aws backup & trasfer to another region & Copy button is disabled in another region | AWS re:Post
Copy snapshot disable | AWS re:Post

Hi,

Did you think about switching to Aurora Distributed SQL: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/dsql/ ?

It's a fully managed service that will take of all this for you.

Best,

Didier

Hello!

I am trying to achieve cross-account and cross-region backup with a single copy job for RDS as well. This should now be possible (starting on Oct 30th) as stated by AWS.

Although I can't seem to get this to work, I've followed both cross-account and cross-region specific instructions but I can't get the copy job to succeed. It is now failing with the following error:

"Miscellaneous: Unable to create the resource. Verify that you have permission to create service linked role. Otherwise wait and try again later"

Even though the role performing the copy job does have the permission required to create a service linked role

More docs that might help you:

• cross-region docs
• cross-account docs

What I can tell you is that this won't be available for RDS automated backups, but you will have to use AWS Backup with a backup vault and a backup plan that includes a copy job targeting the destination vault (cross-account and cross-region). Also, as I understand it, most if not all the keys you will use for encryption (db and vaults) will have to be CMK (customer managed keys) to allow you to specify policies on how to eventually share them cross-account and cross-region

I'm curious to know if anyone has gotten this working. I agree with Tobia that according the article referenced:

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/10/aws-backup-single-action-database-snapshot-copy-regions/

it should be working.

I can successfully copy my RDS (SQL Server) snapshot across accounts, but when I change the vault to a different region in the account I was able to send the copy to it fails. I am also getting the same error - "Miscellaneous: Unable to create the resource. Verify that you have permission to create service linked role. Otherwise wait and try again later". I have verified the permissions on the IAM role, the vault, the keys and I just can't seem to make it work. With that being said, the only reference that it should be working that I can find is the document referenced above.

For anyone getting the error "Miscellaneous: Unable to create the resource. Verify that you have permission to create service linked role. Otherwise wait and try again later" while performing a simultanous cross-account and cross-region copy of RDS snapshots with AWS Backup, I was able to solve the issue by creating the RDS service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForRDS in the target account. Use

aws iam create-service-linked-role --aws-service-name rds.amazonaws.com

from the AWS CLI, or the Terraform / CloudFormation equivalent.

Assigning the permission iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole to the IAM role used by the backup job does not help as this permission is valid in the source account while the service-linked role needs to be created in the target account.