Aeion Aegis vs AWS Backup
AWS Backup is excellent at the layer it operates — automated EBS + RDS + DynamoDB + EFS snapshot orchestration inside one AWS account. Aegis operates at a different layer: per-row application time-travel, Bulk Undo against any tenant collection, and Bring-Your-Own-Bucket so backups live in a trust domain separate from your production VPS — including outside of AWS if you want. The two products solve overlapping but distinct problems; this page is the honest head-to-head.
TL;DR
AWS Backup is the right choice if all of these are true: (1) your entire stack runs on AWS, (2) you're satisfied with RDS-native PITR granularity (~5 minutes typical), (3) keeping backups in the same AWS account as production is acceptable from a compliance + ransomware-blast-radius standpoint, and (4) you don't need per-row undo or application-level time-travel for end-users. Aeion Aegis is the right choice if any of these are true: (1) you run Postgres outside RDS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, on-prem, Linode, Vultr, bare metal), (2) you need RPO under 30 seconds, (3) you want backups in a separate trust domain (different cloud account, different cloud provider, on-prem), (4) you want per-row Bulk Undo for end-users / customer-support agents, or (5) you want application-layer .asOf(timestamp) query semantics for your application data.
Side-by-Side Capability Matrix
| Capability | AWS Backup | Aeion Aegis |
Where AWS Backup Wins
Honest credit where due:
Where Aegis Wins
- Application-layer time travel. AWS Backup restores the whole RDS instance to a point in time. Aegis lets your application code (and your admin UI) query any individual document at any past timestamp via QueryBuilder's
.asOf()modifier — without restoring anything. Use case: a customer-support agent wants to see what a customer's profile looked like on the day they opened their ticket. AWS Backup can't do that without spinning up a full restore. Aegis returns it in <100ms.
Migration Path — RDS + AWS Backup Today → Aegis
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FAQ
Yes. They operate at different layers and don't conflict. Many Aeion-on-AWS deployments keep AWS Backup for EBS/DynamoDB/EFS coverage and add Aegis for application-layer time-travel + BYOB Postgres backups.
RDS PITR restores the whole RDS instance. Aegis PITR via pgBackRest restores either the whole DB (in-place) or extracts specific tables (sidecar mode) to your live DB without touching other tables. Different ergonomics for different recovery patterns.
No. Aegis covers Postgres + application data (anything written through Aeion's collection services). For DynamoDB, AWS Backup is the right tool. For application-layer time-travel of DynamoDB, you'd need a separate solution.
Aegis doesn't replace EBS snapshots. EBS snapshots cover the disk; Aegis covers the database engine + the application. If you want both layers, run AWS Backup for EBS and Aegis for Postgres.
Initial setup is one extra step (configuring bucket credentials). Operations are simpler — restore is two clicks from the Aegis Hub. AWS Backup's restore UX requires navigating to the right service + the right vault + the right recovery point, then waiting for the orchestrator.
AWS Backup gives you AWS Artifact-issued SOC 2 reports covering the service. Aegis generates per-deployment compliance reports with explicit control mappings — your auditor sees "this backup, on this date, was verified restorable with RTO 8m 4s" rather than "the service met its SLA." Different evidence model.
Aegis ships pgBackRest which works with standard Postgres including Aurora-Postgres-compatible. Aurora-native engines (Aurora MySQL) aren't supported. Aurora PostgreSQL has its own continuous backup; you can run Aegis alongside it for the off-account + application-layer layers.
Defense against ransomware that compromises your AWS account credentials. If an attacker gets your IAM keys with backup-vault-write permission, they could delete the vault contents (unless Backup Vault Lock is on, which is the AWS equivalent of Object Lock). Aegis's BYOB-to-non-AWS configuration adds a second layer — even total AWS-account compromise can't delete backups in a Cloudflare R2 bucket.
AWS Backup pricing is per-GB-stored + per-restore. Aegis is included free with any Aeion module — you only pay your S3 storage cost. For a 50 GB Postgres with 30-day PITR retention, Aegis storage runs $0.60–$2.80/month on most S3 providers. Most teams find dual coverage cheaper than over-relying on either alone — the storage cost is dominated by the data volume regardless of who manages the backup.