Skip to main content
Rightsizing · Low severity

Backup Vault Excessive Retention on Non-Prod

Every extra day of retention is billed backup storage, and non-production restore points are the ones nobody restores from.

Free to start. No card. The playground just needs your work email.

AWSprovider
Lowseverity
Savingswhere it shows up
Manualfix, steps written out

AWS

Found, explained, handed over.

Findings with a dollar figure attached, idle, oversized, orphaned, unscheduled and undiscounted spend.

01

Detect

ZopNight checks this automatically across AWS, with read-only access to the account.

02

Explain

Every finding says exactly what to change: Shorten retention on the non-production backup vault. Where the saving can be proven it is priced; where it cannot, the finding says so.

03

Fix

The finding opens with the fix already written out, step by step, so it is one ticket, not an investigation.

Applies to
Backup Vaults on AWS
The fix, by hand
  1. AWS Backup → Backup vaults → the resource → Recovery points. Inspect retention distribution.
  2. AWS Backup → Backup plans → identify which plans target this vault.
  3. For each plan rule, Edit retention: 7-30 days for non-prod, 35+ days for prod (per compliance requirement).
  4. Enable Cold storage transition on the rule (transition after N days, expire after M days). Cold storage is dramatically cheaper for long-tail retention.
  5. Existing recovery points retain their original retention; new ones follow the new policy. Allow one full retention cycle before judging.

These are the steps the finding carries in the product.

Category
Rightsizing. Resources sized for headroom they never use. A smaller size runs the same workload for less.
Where it appears
The Savings tab of Recommendations, with every affected resource listed.
Rule ID
RC-196
Full reference

Backup Vault Excessive Retention on Non-Prod

Related checks

See the oversized resources in your account.

Connect a read-only role and the first pass runs on your own estate. This check, and the rest of the catalogue, with it.

Prefer to talk it through first? Book 20 minutes with the team.

  • $30M+annualised cloud spend under management
  • 550K+resources tracked since launch
  • 20-60%off the bill in the first month
  • SOC 2Type II report, plus ISO 27001

Figures published on zop.dev.

Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console· Multi-cloud automation· Production-ready in 30 min· SOC 2 · ISO 27001· 20–60% off the bill, first month· 4 platforms · 1 console·