Protecting On-Premises VMware VMs with AWS Backup Gateway - A Hybrid Backup Strategy
Deploy a gateway into your vSphere environment and centrally manage on-premises VMware VM backups with AWS Backup plans. Also covers cross-region copy for disaster recovery.
Backup Gateway Overview
Backup Gateway is a gateway service that protects on-premises VMware virtual machines with AWS Backup. While AWS Backup centrally manages backups for AWS resources such as EC2, RDS, and EFS, Backup Gateway extends that management to on-premises VMware VMs.
Deployment and Backup
The Backup Gateway appliance is deployed to vSphere as an OVA template and activated with your AWS account. After registering the vCenter Server hypervisor, the managed VMs appear in the AWS Backup console. You define a backup plan specifying the schedule (e.g., daily at 2:00 AM), retention period (e.g., 30 days), and cross-region copy. Restores can recover an entire VM to vSphere or retrieve individual files.
Backup Policies and Restoration
VM backups taken through Backup Gateway are managed by AWS Backup plans. You can set lifecycle policies such as retaining daily backups for 30 days and monthly backups for one year. To restore, select a recovery point in the AWS Backup console and recover the VM to your on-premises VMware environment. Cross-region copy keeps a DR backup in another region for recovery in case of a regional outage. Backup encryption is configured with either AWS managed keys or customer managed keys. To understand data management with Backup Gateway, related books (Amazon) are a helpful reference.
Backup Gateway Pricing
Backup Gateway storage costs approximately $0.05 per GB/month. Restores cost approximately $0.02 per GB. The gateway VM itself runs on your on-premises resources with no additional AWS charges. Properly configuring retention periods and lifecycle policies to avoid unnecessarily long retention keeps storage costs under control. Incremental backups transfer only changed blocks, minimizing both storage usage and network transfer.
Summary
Backup Gateway is a service that centrally manages on-premises VMware virtual machines with AWS Backup. Deploy the gateway into your vSphere environment and define daily and monthly schedules with lifecycle policies in a backup plan. Cross-region copy secures DR backups, enabling unified data protection across cloud and on-premises environments.