AWS instances will now automatically recover your files in event of a failure

AWS Office
(Image credit: Tony Webster / Flickr)

Picking up right where you left off in the event of a failure will now be possible for those running Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) instances on AWS.

Previously, if customers wanted to set an EC2 instance to recover automatically, they could only do so by setting up an alarm in Amazon CloudWatch.

Now though, if an underlying hardware problem comes along, EC2 instances will be automatically recovered on Amazon’s cloud computing service where they’ll receive a new instance ID, private IP addresses, public IPv4 IP address, Elastic IP addresses and all instance metadata. Unfortunately though, data in memory will still be lost in the event of a failure.

Automatic recovery of EC2 instances

While automatic recovery of EC2 instances will likely be a big deal for businesses that run their workloads in the cloud, AWS only released a brief announcement regarding the new feature.

While the announcement also contained a link to the company's documentation on how to recover instances, it didn’t mention anything about recovery points for data on disks or the time required for an auto-recovered instance to resume operations.

EC2 customers will also be able to disable the new auto-recovery feature. For most customers this probably isn’t a good idea but AWS points out in its documentation that those running instances in placement groups might want to disable the feature so that their instances are restored to the same placement group.

Still though, hardware faults in a server could indicate that there is a problem in a server rack or even an entire row which is why having an instance auto recover to another availability zone or region makes sense.

Via The Register

Anthony Spadafora

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home. 

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