This feature enables AWS customers to list the blocks in an snapshot EBS, compare the differences between two snapshot EBSs, and directly read data from snapshot EBSs. To perform these tasks before AWS released the EBS direct APIs, you would need to launch temporary di Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and attach EBS volumes created from the snapshot EBSs. Now you can call the APIs from EC2 instances, AWS Lambda functions, or containers. This enables you to read from, list the contents of a single snapshot, or list the changes between two snapshot EBSs without having to create EBS volumes from snapshots first. In July 2020, AWS launched an additional set of EBS direct APIs that enable customers to create and write directly to snapshot EBSs. We have seen a lot of interest and feedback from partner AWS since we launched the direct APIs.
This blog post focuses specifically on Clumio, an Partner AWS per le tecnologie avanzate with AWS Storage competency. Clumio provides a secure, multi-platform, backup as a service offering that launched in August 2019, initially protecting on-premises VMware and VMware Cloud su AWS workloads. In December 2019, Clumio’s offerings quickly expanded to include protecting EBS volumes. In this post, I discuss how introducing Amazon EBS direct APIs into their EBS backup workflow helped provide an average of 30% cost savings and an overall 15% reduction in backup times for Clumio customers. As an active participant in the beta program for the direct APIs, Clumio was very interested in implementing them into their EBS backup workflows.
Introduzione a Clumio per i servizi nativi di AWS
Clumio provides backup as a service for enterprises with requirements to protect EC2 instances, EBS volumes, and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) instances. Built on AWS, Clumio provides its customers with a simple, agent-less method to protect EBS volumes, with none of the typical complexity and costs of managing snapshots or backup infrastructure. With Clumio, you can protect all your accounts, across Regions, in one single-paned interface. This helps maintan consistency of data protection and opens use cases for disaster recovery (DR), testing and development, and migration.
Once subscribed to Clumio, Clumio customers simply deploy an AWS CloudFormation template in their account, set up their backup policies. The process is streamlined and can be up and running in 15 minutes or less. Clumio backs up all data securely in an immutable fashion and provides customers with an ‘air gapped’ copy of their data outside of their account. This way, if a customer’s account is compromised or has volumes/snapshots deleted mistakenly, Clumio can help them quickly restore their data to their account. Finally, as a SaaS offering, Clumio transparently provides updates and enhancements for its services on a biweekly basis, like integration with Amazon EBS direct APIs. This lets Clumio customers focus more on their core competencies, versus spending time maintaining backup infrastructure.
Clumio’s Amazon EBS workflow before EBS direct APIs
When Clumio launched their Clumio for Amazon EBS service in late 2019, EBS direct APIs were not yet available. As a result, whenever Clumio initiated a backup of an Amazon EBS volume, they had to mount the EBS volume on an Amazon EC2 worker instance inside a Clumio gruppo di auto-scaling EC2di Clumio. A quel punto, Clumio doveva leggere l’intero contenuto del volume per individuare i blocchi modificati, quindi elaborare e inviare i dati modificati al servizio Clumio. Sebbene questo flusso di lavoro fosse automatizzato e trasparente per il cliente, presentava alcuni svantaggi. Uno di questi era che l’istanza di lavoro EC2 doveva leggere l’intero contenuto del volume per individuare i dati modificati durante il processo di backup. La lettura dell’intero contenuto di un volume per individuare le modifiche comportava un notevole dispendio in termini di tempo e costi per i clienti.
Flusso di lavoro Clumio per Amazon EBS dopo l’introduzione delle API dirette di Amazon EBS
In February 2020, Clumio rolled out an update to their platform that leveraged the new Amazon EBS direct APIs. As a result, Clumio is now capable of programmatically determining the changed blocks between EBS snapshots. They no longer have to restore EBS volumes from snapshots and compare the differences on an EC2 worker instance, which greatly benefitted Clumio customers. Clumio’s customers can now perform up to 15% faster” and “spending up to 30% less on AWS infrastructure costs associated with running Clumio worker instances (EC2 and EBS). Clumio still makes use of EC2 worker instances today, to provide services such as deduplication, compression, and indexing for customers before they receive the data in the Clumio service.
Piani futuri per Clumio relativi ad Amazon EBS con le API EBS Direct Snapshot
Clumio, like AWS, is continuously enhancing their services and innovating based on customer feedback. Amazon EBS direct APIs were the result of AWS listening closely to its partners and customers, understanding what features mattered most to them, and innovating with that in mind. Clumio is working closely with AWS service teams on methods that would enable them to introduce additional Amazon EBS direct APIs into their workflow. The goal is to persistently drive down expenses for their customers by integrating AWS cost optimization strategies, while concurrently enhancing their operational efficiency. This includes streamlining processes to minimize expenditures on AWS services, alongside improving backup and restore times for heightened resilience and cost-effectiveness.
One action-item under consideration is completely removing the need for Amazon EC2 worker instances in a customer AWS account. Clumio could seek to do this through introducing serverless workflows that would call the EBS direct APIs for list, read, and write operations. They also have the option of using a serverless architecture to perform the necessary deduplication, compression. Considering these options could further simplify EBS backup and restore operations for Clumio customers.
Sintesi
In this post, I provided a brief overview of Clumio’s AWS-native service, and covered how their Amazon EBS backup workflows looked before and after the use of EBS direct APIs. The direct APIs are a programmatic way to compare the changes between two EBS Snapshots, which helped Clumio customers save an average of 30% in cost and 15% reduction in backup times. I also discussed how they are planning to enhance their service in the future using more of the EBS direct APIs.
If would also like to consider the Amazon EBS direct APIs for your EBS backup and restore workflow, please review the documentazione relativa alle API dirette di EBS available on our website.
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