Step 5. Specify Amazon S3 Bucket

At the Bucket step of the wizard, do the following:

From the Data center drop-down list, select an AWS Region where the repository will be located.
Choose whether you want to use an existing bucket or to create a new one as the target location for image-level backups of EC2 instances, additional copies of Amazon VPC backups and indexes of EFS file systems:

To specify an existing bucket, in the Bucket field, enter the name of an Amazon S3 bucket where the repository will be created.

Alternatively, click Browse and select the necessary bucket in the Select Bucket window. For a bucket to be displayed in the Bucket list, it must be created in AWS as described in AWS Documentation.

Important

If you have any S3 Lifecycle configuration associated with the selected Amazon S3 bucket, limit the scope of lifecycle rules applied to backup files created by the Veeam Backup for AWS appliance. Otherwise, the backup files may be unexpectedly deleted or transitioned to another storage class, and the Veeam Backup for AWS appliance will not be able to access the files. For more information on managing S3 Lifecycle configurations, see AWS Documentation.

To create a new bucket, click Browse. In the Select Bucket window, click New Bucket and enter a name for the bucket. Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically create a bucket in the specified AWS Region. Note that the bucket name must meet the requirements described in AWS Documentation.

Note

If you plan to enable immutability settings for the created repository:

S3 Versioning and Object Lock must be enabled for the specified Amazon S3 bucket, and the default retention period must not be configured for the bucket. For more information on Amazon S3 immutability features, see AWS Documentation.

If you choose to create a new bucket, note that Veeam Backup & Replication can only create buckets with the S3 Versioning and Object Lock options disabled. That is why you cannot enable immutability for repositories located in these buckets.

If you want to protect backups stored in the repository from being lost as a result of malware, ransomware, or any other malicious actions, you can enable immutability at the repository level. To do that, select the Make backups immutable for the entire duration of their retention policy check box. For more information on immutability, see the Veeam Backup for AWS User Guide, section How Immutability Works.

Important

Consider the following:

You cannot create standard repositories with the disabled immutability settings in Amazon S3 buckets with the S3 Versioning and Object Lock options enabled.
You cannot edit the configured immutability settings after the repository is created.

[Applies only if you have chosen to create an archive repository] When you create an archive repository, backups are stored in a secure, durable and low-cost S3 Glacier storage class by default. To store backups in the lowest-cost S3 Glacier Deep Archive storage class that you plan to access once or twice a year, select the Use the Deep Archive storage class check box. Note that after the repository is created, you will be unable to change the selected storage class.

Note

When you create an archive repository, Veeam Backup for AWS does not create any S3 Glacier vaults in Amazon S3. Instead, it assigns the selected storage class (S3 Glacier or S3 Glacier Deep Archive) to backups stored in the repository. That is why the archived backups remain in Amazon S3 and cannot be accessed directly through the Amazon S3 Glacier service.