Quick summary
- Over-retained snapshots and inconsistent retention rules drive costs sky-high.
- AWS durability (11 nines) isn’t a backup solution. You still need point-in-time recovery.
- Posture-aware automation classifies workloads and enforces retention at scale.
- Right-sizing retention windows and automating enforcement cut costs without risk.
Last week, I joined AWS’s Anthony Fiore for a live webinar where we tackled the messy realities of cloud backup retention and how to fix them without sacrificing safety. If you missed it, you can watch the full recording here or read the recap below.
What problems do teams run into with backup retention?
- Retention drift: A team ships an EC2 app with snapshots set to “forever.” Two years later, you’re paying for hundreds nobody dares delete.
- Protection gaps: Migrations happen, backups get forgotten. Some workloads have no protection at all.
- S3 confusion: Versioning and replication aren’t time travel. A valid delete wipes data; durability won’t save you.
- Inconsistent rules: One team keeps prod for 3 years, another for 45 days. Finance wants 7 years. It’s chaos.
11 nines protects against infrastructure failure—not against a developer mistake, ransomware, or an accidental or malicious delete.
What does posture-aware automation mean (vs. tagging)?
Tags (env, BU, cost center) help, but they’re incomplete and drift over time. This is why many teams are moving toward Cloud Backup Posture Management.
Posture-aware automation:
- Finds all persistent data (S3, EC2/EBS, RDS, etc.)—tagged or not.
- Classifies by context (prod vs. dev, sensitivity like PII or financial data).
- Applies policies to the workload’s posture, not its tags (e.g., Prod + PII ⇒ 1-year retention with immutability).
- Enforces org-wide rules with guardrails (Backup Posture Controls) so teams can self-serve without breaking policy.
Automate based on the workload, not what someone remembered to tag.
How can you cut retention costs in AWS?
1) Classify before you retain
Build an inventory of S3 buckets, EBS volumes, RDS instances, etc. Group by business context, not account. Apply retention tiers: Dev/Test, Internal Prod, Customer Prod w/ PII, Financial Systems.
2) Right-size retention windows
- Dev/Test: 7–30 days
- Typical Prod: 90–365 days
- Regulated/Financial: 5–7 years (with immutability windows, usually 30–90 days)
Start from RPO/RTO and cloud backup compliance requirements. Immutability is powerful—use it sparingly.
3) Automate enforcement
Set org-wide guardrails: “Any prod resource must have ≥ 8 months retention and cross-region copy.” When teams drift, auto-trigger tickets in ServiceNow/Jira.
4) Use AWS-native tools—but tie them to outcomes
S3 versioning, Object Lock, replication, lifecycle policies, and Storage Lens are helpful. But revisit quarterly—cost optimization is a program, not a one-off.
What does a simple retention matrix look like?
Where does Eon fit?
- Built on Amazon S3 durability, but adds time-based recovery and posture awareness across AWS.
- Auto-discovers resources, classifies data, and applies policy at scale—no per-account tweaking.
- Backup Posture Controls give you central guardrails plus team freedom.
- Cost optimizations are baked into every backup method. On average, Eon customers cut their cloud data protection costs by 40%—and with Eon’s Cost Explorer, teams can see exactly what’s driving spend and where to cut it further.
Try the Eon Backup Posture Assessment
We’re teaming with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure on an assessment that scans your org and reports:
- What persistent data you have (by service/account)
- Which protection features are enabled (versioning, replication, cross-region, immutability)
- Gaps, over-retention, and quick wins to cut costs without adding risk
Request your free AWS × Eon Backup Posture Assessment report or explore how peers like Innago cut 40% of backup costs.
Common questions about retention costs
Q: We already use lifecycle policies. Anything left to optimize?
A: Absolutely. Lifecycle policies are a good starting point, but they only move data between storage classes or expire objects. You’ll still want to regularly review how data is accessed, trim immutability windows to match business needs, and confirm retention rules align with workload tiers (dev/test vs. prod vs. regulated data). Think of cost optimization as a continuous process, not a one-time configuration.
Q: Can we group accounts under different rules?
A: Yes. With Backup Posture Controls, you can scope rules by account, OU, tags, or even metadata. That means one business unit can operate under stricter compliance requirements while another follows lighter retention rules—without losing central enforcement. It avoids the chaos of each team inventing their own retention policy.
Q: Is replication the same as backup?
A: No. Replication is useful, but it mirrors everything—including accidental deletes, misconfigurations, and ransomware events. A proper backup gives you point-in-time recovery, so you can roll back to a safe state before the error or attack occurred. Replication keeps data available, but backup keeps it recoverable.
