We use scripts to sync data from EC2 instances to S3, but monitoring, retention, reporting, and recovery are getting harder to organize as the environment grows. What made you consider a backup platform, and was the extra management worth it?
When do backup scripts stop being enough?
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n406!baudgate_8
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The tipping point isn't necessarily a server count. Can you quickly say what's protected, when it was last restored successfully, and who gets alerted if a job fails?
Run a timed restore drill before shopping. A sync to S3 is useful, but make sure retention, protection against unwanted changes, and restore testing are explicit. The drill should show which gaps a platform actually needs to solve.
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I'd look hard at silent failures. A script can report success even though it copied nothing useful because a mount moved or credentials changed. Check that expected data is present, not just that the process exited cleanly.
Restoring across several systems is another job entirely. If your team has to piece together the recovery steps from a pile of scripts, centralized recovery tools may be worth the cost.
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It doesn't have to be all scripts or all platform. A tool like Veeam can help schedule and organize backups across environments and offer instant recovery, while scripts can still handle specific database or file system jobs where the full platform isn't needed.
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Scale changes the economics. A few scripts may be easy enough to maintain. In the middle, paying for a platform can offload a lot of monitoring and maintenance. At a very large scale, building an internal solution may make more sense if the team can support it.
Price the support contract too, not just the initial purchase. That recurring cost can change the comparison.
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