Snapshots are often mistaken for complete backups, leading to gaps in recovery readiness for EC2 workloads. This white paper explains the fundamental differences between snapshots and true backups, including consistency, retention, portability, and ransomware resilience. It outlines limitations of snapshots such as dependency on the production account, lack of immutability, and operational complexity at scale. The paper contrasts these with SaaS-based backups that provide air-gapped storage, long-term retention, and centralized recovery across regions and accounts. Practical guidance is provided to help organizations decide when snapshots are appropriate and when purpose-built backups are required for compliance, security, and disaster recovery.

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