Implement a backup technique for Amazon Fast Sight BI property

Amazon Fast Sight is a core characteristic inside Amazon Fast — an agentic, AI-powered digital workspace designed to maximise end-user productiveness— that gives AI-powered BI capabilities by means of pure language queries, interactive dashboards, and embedded analytics from trusted enterprise information sources.

Amazon Fast Sight property resembling dashboards, analyses, datasets, and information sources could be backed up utilizing the AssetsAsBundle APIs described on this submit. A backup technique helps defend towards unintentional deletions, unintended modifications, and regional disruptions. For groups that depend on Fast Sight to assist vital enterprise choices, a well-designed backup plan is really useful.

This submit is the primary in a two-part sequence masking backup and restore for Amazon Fast Sight BI property:

• Half 1 (this submit): Covers tips on how to design and implement a backup technique, together with asset choice, the APIs out there for export, and a ready-to-use pattern automation software.
• Half 2: Covers the restore course of. You need to use the backups created in Half 1 to recuperate property after unintentional deletion, unintended modifications, or as a part of a broader catastrophe restoration plan.

An efficient backup technique is particularly vital for organizations in closely regulated industries resembling monetary companies, healthcare, and power, for a number of causes:

• Information loss prevention protects towards human errors, unintentional deletions, and occasions like ransomware.
• Assembly restoration aims helps organizations obtain their Restoration Level Goals (RPO) and Restoration Time Goals (RTO), minimizing information loss throughout incidents.
• Audit and reporting helps monitoring and reporting on property all through their lifecycle (creation, updates, and deletion).
• Elevated workload resiliency permits fast restoration of methods to earlier states, decreasing downtime and enhancing reliability. This aligns with the Reliability pillar of the AWS Nicely-Architected Framework.
• Catastrophe restoration (DR) preparedness offers a basis for implementing a DR course of that anticipates technology-related disasters and contributes to your group’s enterprise continuity plan (BCP).

For extra details about the catastrophe restoration capabilities of Fast, and tips on how to assess them towards organizational necessities, see the Amazon Fast catastrophe restoration and resiliency information.

On this submit, we cowl greatest practices for implementing an efficient backup technique for BI property in Fast Sight. We begin by masking the choices for choosing the property to incorporate in your backup, then clarify the high-level APIs out there for that goal, and finalize with pattern code that will help you get began rapidly.

Backup practices for enterprise intelligence

BI methods current distinctive enterprise continuity challenges due to their function in supporting decision-making processes and key stakeholders. You will need to defend them towards service disruptions by implementing an efficient backup plan. Earlier than constructing this plan, it’s essential to grasp the structure and the scale to think about as a part of your DR plan.

The previous diagram reveals that Fast Sight depends on AWS’s international infrastructure throughout a number of AWS Areas to present excessive availability for Fast Sight property, together with information sources, datasets, analyses, and dashboards.

The Tremendous-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine (SPICE) shops and encrypts imported information with excessive availability (HA) by means of redundant copies throughout a number of Availability Zones (AZs) inside the Fast Sight Area.

With this regional design, you may keep assets in a number of Areas and use a secondary Area within the unlikely occasion of a regional outage affecting your major BI assets.

For consumer and id administration, Fast Sight makes use of a single Area that you just outline throughout the preliminary account subscription course of. The diagram reveals that this Area hosts consumer and group id info and have to be out there for customers to entry Fast Sight.

For instance, if a consumer needs to entry a dashboard within the eu-west-1 Area however the Fast Sight principal Area is us-east-1, each Areas have to be out there to complete the consumer entry stream. Fast Sight makes use of regional structure with AZs for redundancy. Nevertheless, if what you are promoting wants safety towards the unlikely occasion of a regional outage, you have to design your catastrophe restoration (DR) technique accordingly.

Tip: If you happen to’re uncertain of your Fast Sight principal Area, you may retrieve this info by operating the next command:

aws quicksight describe-account-settings --aws-account-id XXXXXXXXXXXX --region us-east-1

Observe: This aws quicksight describe-account-settings command specifies us-east-1 because the endpoint Area. If you happen to obtain a 200 standing, your id Area is us-east-1. In any other case, you obtain an error like the next, which instructs you to level to your present id Area (for instance, eu-west-1):

An error occurred (AccessDeniedException) when calling the DescribeAccountSettings operation: Operation is being known as from endpoint us-east-1, however your id area is us-east-1. Please use the eu-west-1 endpoint.

Defining Fast Sight property to incorporate within the backup plan

With a clearer understanding of Fast Sight structure, the subsequent step is choosing the property to incorporate in your backup plan, for this you may observe two methods:

Again up particular property:

This selection is appropriate if you outline a backup or DR technique centered on defending vital property for what you are promoting operations that you would be able to conveniently restore after a catastrophe or unintentional deletion. This contains particular dashboards (and their dependent property) that key stakeholders use to make enterprise choices or that working groups (finance, logistics, procurement, and so forth) use to assist continued enterprise operation.

This selection is really useful if you require a simple backup plan and when the BI property which are key to enterprise continuity are a subset of all of the property out there in your Fast Sight occasion.

Again up all property:

This technique is really useful if you need to outline a backup technique that covers each versioning and potential catastrophe restoration. By backing up all property, you may carry out in-place rollback of any asset to a earlier state if a human error causes an unintended modification or deletion. Moreover, as a result of you could have a backup of all property in your account, you may choose particular property to revive as a part of your DR plan.

This strategy provides you most protection but additionally requires extra complicated orchestration and automation. This submit focuses on this technique and offers pattern code that you would be able to adapt to reduce time to manufacturing.

After you choose your technique, select the kind of BI property to export. Fast Sight presents the next asset varieties:

• Dashboards: Learn-only property focused at reader customers, revealed from an evaluation. You may also save a dashboard to an evaluation to make edits.
• Analyses and dashboards: An evaluation is an editable model of a dashboard. Solely the authors you select can entry it.
• Information sources: An information supply implements the connection to your information, which may come from analytic sources resembling databases or information warehouses, AWS companies resembling Amazon Easy Storage Service (Amazon S3), or third-party software program as a service (SaaS) information suppliers resembling Jira and ServiceNow.
• Datasets: An asset sort that makes use of an information supply to entry exterior information that you need to use to organize and construction the information that powers your analyses and dashboards.
• VPC connections: A characteristic that you need to use to combine together with your VPC assets resembling databases and information warehouses which are positioned in that VPC or reachable from it (peered VPCs or networks linked by means of VPN or AWS Direct Join).
• Themes: A set of styling and look settings that you would be able to apply to a number of analyses and dashboards to match an aesthetic customary that meets your product or company branding wants.

All these property have dependencies between one another, with analyses and dashboards on the prime of this dependency chain, as the next diagram illustrates.

If you select the asset varieties to again up, concentrate on these dependencies so you may absolutely restore property from the backup. For instance, if you again up a dashboard, you additionally have to again up its dependencies, which could embrace datasets, information sources, VPC connections, and a theme. The subsequent sections clarify how Fast Sight export APIs deal with these dependencies.

Backup course of overview

The mechanism we cowl on this submit makes use of the AssetsAsBundle APIs out there in Fast Sight. AssetsAsBundle APIs (additionally referenced as AAB APIs) are a set of high-level APIs designed to assist programmatic export and import of Fast Sight assets. They cowl a variety of use instances resembling launch administration, backup and restore, cross-account migration, and steady integration and steady supply (CI/CD) workflows.

This set of APIs contains the next operations:

• StartAssetBundleExportJob: Creates a bundle (bundle) that comprises the property exported as a part of the operation. The bundle is a zipper file with textual content recordsdata. The format could be both JSON or AWS CloudFormation relying on the worth specified within the ExportFormat parameter. Relying on the format, you may import these property utilizing the AAB APIs immediately or use CloudFormation infrastructure as code (IaC) for provisioning. After the asynchronous operation finishes, the system uploads the bundle to a short lived S3 location for downloading.
• StartAssetBundleImportJob: Takes a beforehand exported bundle and restores the property packed in it. You need to use the import operation to outline overrides for a large set of parameters resembling asset names and information supply connection parameters (host, port, workgroup, and extra).
• DescribeAssetBundleImportJob and DescribeAssetBundleExportJob: Each AssetBundle operations are asynchronous. You need to use these APIs to explain the operation, ballot for its standing, and act after it finishes. If you carry out an export job, you need to use DescribeAssetBundleExportJob to retrieve the DownloadUrl for the bundle, which is legitimate for five minutes. You may renew the URL with additional calls to DescribeAssetBundleExportJob.

Supported property and present limitations of AssetsAsBundle APIs

AssetsAsBundle APIs assist a listing of Fast Sight property together with analyses, dashboards, information sources, datasets, shared folders, restricted folders, refresh schedules, themes, and VPC connections. Nevertheless, some asset varieties have limitations.

Unsupported information sources: Adobe Analytics, File, GitHub, Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Amazon S3 (with regionally uploaded manifest recordsdata), and Twitter.

Unsupported datasets: Datasets that comprise machine studying (ML) columns generated utilizing inference by means of linked SageMaker ML fashions.

You will need to exclude these property out of your backup plan to keep away from an InvalidParameterValueException error if you concern the StartAssetBundleExportJob operation.

To work round this, you may substitute unsupported information sources and datasets by following these procedures.

For Amazon S3 information sources with native manifest recordsdata:

1. Create a brand new Amazon S3 information supply.
2. Add the manifest file to Amazon S3.
3. Reference the manifest file out of your information supply.
4. Substitute the information supply within the dependent datasets utilizing the UpdateDataSet API.

For different unsupported information sources and datasets:

Observe this process to rework your incompatible dataset right into a suitable one:

1. Create an evaluation linked to the information supply you need to assist in your backup.
2. Create a desk visible that shows all dataset columns.
3. Export the information as a CSV file.
4. Create an Amazon S3 dataset utilizing a manifest uploaded to Amazon S3.
5. Replace your analyses and dashboards with the brand new dataset utilizing the substitute dataset performance.

Different property to think about as a part of your backup

Though Fast Sight assets are the important thing property to again up, you’ll want to embrace some extra assets and configurations in your backup plan for potential restore or catastrophe restoration conditions.

You may export Fast Sight property together with their permissions, together with the customers and teams which have entry to them. You management this by setting the IncludePermissions flag to true.

As a result of every Fast Sight asset is owned by a consumer, you’ll want to again up customers and teams to have a full and restorable backup.

AssetsAsBundle APIs don’t cowl customers and teams, however you need to use DescribeUser, DescribeGroup, and DescribeGroupMembership to incorporate this info within the backup.

Along with customers and teams, think about backing up account settings resembling account customization (the DescribeAccountCustomization API), personalized manufacturers (the DescribeBrand API), and folders (the ListFolders, DescribeFolder, and DescribeFolderPermissions APIs).

Technical implementation

On this part, we cowl tips on how to create an automation that orchestrates the invocation of the Fast Sight APIs wanted to carry out an efficient backup implementation. We offer pattern code on the finish of this part that implements each customers and teams backup and Fast Sight property backup.

Backup orchestration stream

The automation software helps three modes of operation: consumer backup solely, property backup solely, and each. This offers most flexibility if you carry out your backup plan. The next diagram reveals the stream that the software follows relying on the chosen operation mode.

Customers and group backup

The consumer and teams backup service makes use of the Fast Sight consumer and group APIs to learn your account’s present state and retailer the retrieved consumer and group information in Amazon DynamoDB. The service makes use of date-based suffixes for DynamoDB desk names to protect historic backup information and stop overwrites. This permits point-in-time restoration and backup historical past monitoring. This design additionally simplifies restore operations since you don’t have to filter by date suffixes if you question information inside a particular backup.

Instance for a backup run on 2025-10-19:

• Customers: quicksight-users-backup-2025-10-19
• Teams: quicksight-groups-backup-2025-10-19
• Person-Group Memberships: quicksight-users-groups-backup-2025-10-19

Customers Desk Schema:

{
  "user_name": "string (partition key)",
  "arn": "string",
  "e-mail": "string",
  "function": "string",
  "identity_type": "string",
  "lively": "boolean",
  "principal_id": "string",
  "backup_timestamp": "string (ISO 8601)",
  "custom_permissions_name": "string"
}

Teams Desk Schema:

{
  "group_name": "string (partition key)",
  "arn": "string",
  "description": "string",
  "principal_id": "string",
  "members": ["list of user names"],
  "backup_timestamp": "string (ISO 8601)"
}

Customers-Teams Membership Desk Schema:

{
  "membership_id": "string (partition key, format: username#groupname)",
  "user_name": "string",
  "group_name": "string",
  "user_arn": "string",
  "group_arn": "string",
  "backup_timestamp": "string (ISO 8601)"
}

Observe: The consumer and group backup service implements dual-Area assist. Person and group operations use the identity_region configuration parameter, whereas backup asset operations use the usual aws_region. This design addresses enterprise situations the place Fast Sight id administration is configured in a distinct Area than asset storage.

Property backup

The property bundle backup service coordinates the export of property inside a Area and uploads the generated bundle to an Amazon S3 location for later use. The automation backs up the next property: information sources, datasets, analyses, dashboards, and themes. By default, the backup contains all dependencies. You may disable this setting if wanted.

At a excessive stage, the service performs the next duties:

• Lists all information sources utilizing the ListDataSources API, filtering out Amazon S3 manifest-based information sources and information sources with invalid VPC connection names. Names should comprise solely alphanumeric characters separated by hyphens.
• Lists all datasets utilizing the ListDataSets API, filtering out FILE datasets by checking the ImportMode area.
• Lists all analyses utilizing the ListAnalyses API.
• Lists all dashboards utilizing the ListDashboards API.
• Teams property by sort for separate export jobs. You may configure the variety of property to incorporate in every bundle, with a most of 100 (the API restrict).
• Checks the export job standing utilizing the DescribeAssetBundleExportJob API and implements exponential backoff to keep away from throttling.
• Uploads the finished asset bundle to Amazon S3 utilizing the next prefix construction.

my-QuickSight-backups/
└── QuickSight-backups/                          # Customized S3 prefix
    ├── 2024/01/15/
    │   ├── datasources/
    │   │   ├── datasources-143022.zip            # Single bundle (≤ max_assets_per_bundle)
    │   │   └── datasources_bundle_1-143045.zip   # A number of bundles when property exceed restrict
    │   ├── datasets/
    │   │   ├── datasets_bundle_1-143045.zip      # A number of bundles when property exceed restrict
    │   │   └── datasets_bundle_2-143045.zip      # Sequential numbering for a number of bundles
    │   ├── analyses/
    │   │   └── analyses-143108.zip               # Single bundle
    │   └── dashboards/
    │       ├── dashboards_bundle_1-143131.zip    # First of a number of dashboard bundles
    │       └── dashboards_bundle_2-143131.zip    # Second dashboard bundle
    └── 2024/01/16/
        ├── datasources/
        │   └── datasources-090015.zip
        ├── datasets/
        │   └── datasets-090030.zip
        └── ...

Observe: The bundle quantity string is current solely when the variety of property to again up exceeds the configured worth in max_assets_per_bundle.

Finish-to-end software for backup creation

The QuickSight-backup software offers a easy technique to export all of your Fast Sight property and their dependencies into sturdy, cheap storage resembling Amazon S3. The software creates new prefixes for generated bundles, so earlier backups aren’t overwritten. The software additionally exports customers and teams utilizing the identical precept: DynamoDB shops this information, and desk names comprise the date when the backup was generated. With this strategy, you need to use backups as a supply to your restoration technique and observe the historical past of modifications to your Fast Sight property and related customers.

The code makes use of the Boto3 Python SDK and contains packaging assist by means of setuptools for setup and use.

Tooling utilization and configuration

Earlier than utilizing the software, be sure you meet the next conditions:

• Python 3.8 or larger.
• A Fast Sight account with Enterprise version or larger.
• AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) configured with applicable credentials.
• Required AWS permissions. See the Permissions part within the code.

Clone from supply

git clone https://github.com/aws-samples/sample-quicksight-backup-tool.git
cd quicksight-backup-tool

Create a Python venv (really useful)

python3 -m venv ./.venv
supply .venv/bin/activate

Set up the bundle

Create a configuration file

To get began, consult with the config-basic.yaml file within the repo or create one from scratch. This configuration file defines key parameters for the software, together with the next:

• AWS account.
• Area.
• Backup places (DynamoDB tables and Amazon S3 bucket prefixes).

Utilizing the software

After set up, you may run the software as follows:

quicksight-backup --config config.yaml --mode full

You solely want to offer the --config parameter. You may omit the remaining. The --mode parameter controls the backup sort (full, users-only, or assets-only), the place full is the default mode. The next record describes the arguments the software helps.

Non-compulsory arguments

• --mode, -m: Backup mode (full, users-only, assets-only); default is full.
• --output-dir, -o: Output listing for experiences and manifests.
• --verbose, -v: Allow verbose (DEBUG) logging.
• --log-file: Path to log file.
• --dry-run: Validate configuration with out operating the backup.
• --no-progress: Disable progress indicators.
• --generate-manifest: Generate a backup manifest file.
• --generate-report: Generate a human-readable backup report.
• --version: Present model info.

For extra info, see the software README file.

Device code

Yow will discover the code for this software within the aws-samples repository. This software helps you get began rapidly. Use it as a foundational reference to refine and adapt to your particular backup necessities.

Earlier than you implement a backup resolution in your manufacturing setting, verify that you just:

• Assessment and adapt the code to align together with your particular infrastructure necessities, safety insurance policies, and compliance requirements.
• Conduct thorough testing in a non-production setting to validate performance and efficiency.
• Implement applicable safety controls together with encryption, entry administration, and audit logging required by your group.
• Validate restoration procedures to verify your backup technique meets your outlined Restoration Time Goals (RTO) and Restoration Level Goals (RPO).
• Contemplate price optimization methods and monitoring to maintain the answer inside your operational funds.
• Keep away from concurrent software execution: This software depends on the AssetsAsBundle APIs, which have low throttling thresholds. The pattern software shouldn’t be designed to run a number of situations in parallel inside the identical AWS account. If a number of groups want to make use of the software, think about implementing a concurrency management mechanism (for instance, a lock desk in DynamoDB or a database-level lock) to stop concurrent runs that might set off API throttling.

Scheduled execution

The pattern software described within the earlier part is designed for on-demand execution and is effectively fitted to getting began or operating ad-hoc backups. For a production-grade backup technique, you would possibly need to automate backup runs on a recurring schedule in order that your Fast Sight property are persistently protected with out guide intervention.

This part outlines the high-level structure for a scheduled, absolutely automated backup resolution. Detailed implementation and code for this structure are exterior the scope of this submit.

Structure overview

The scheduled execution structure is constructed on three AWS managed companies that work collectively to offer a dependable, serverless, and cost-effective automation pipeline:

• Amazon EventBridge is the scheduler. It triggers the backup workflow at an outlined cadence, for instance, day by day at midnight. EventBridge guidelines allow you to outline versatile cron-based or rate-based schedules with out managing any underlying infrastructure.
• AWS Step Capabilities is the orchestration layer. It coordinates the run of the person backup steps within the right sequence. Step Capabilities offers built-in error dealing with, retry logic, and execution historical past, which makes it effectively fitted to long-running workflows that span a number of API calls and asynchronous operations.
• AWS Lambda implements every particular person backup step as an unbiased, stateless operate. Splitting the backup logic throughout a number of Lambda features addresses the time constraints inherent within the backup course of. Every export job is asynchronous and would possibly take a number of minutes to complete, relying on the quantity and measurement of property being exported.

Workflow steps

As a result of the end-to-end backup course of can take a major period of time, the automation is decomposed into discrete steps, every carried out by a devoted Lambda operate. AWS Step Capabilities orchestrates these features in sequence, passing state between them and dealing with retries for transient failures. The workflow consists of the next steps:

1. Customers and teams backup: Retrieves all Fast Sight customers, teams, and group memberships utilizing the Fast Sight id APIs and persists the information to DynamoDB with date-based desk suffixes, as described within the Technical implementation part. This operation can run in parallel with the asset backup operations as a result of it doesn’t have any dependency.
2. Asset backup discovery: Lists all Fast Sight property within the goal Area (information sources, datasets, analyses, and dashboards), applies the required filters to exclude unsupported asset varieties, and teams property into lists of as much as 100 objects every. The output of this step is handed to subsequent steps as enter.
3. Generate bundle: Initiates export jobs for all of the property included within the record specified because the enter parameter, polls for job completion, and uploads the ensuing ZIP bundles to the designated Amazon S3 prefix.
4. Examine standing: Periodically polls the lively bundle execution and notifies the AWS Step Capabilities state machine when the export finishes.

The next diagram illustrates the high-level stream of the scheduled execution structure.

Key design concerns

• Asynchronous polling: The check-status Lambda operate polls the job initiated by the generate-bundle Lambda operate utilizing the DescribeAssetBundleExportJob API till the job reaches a terminal state (SUCCESSFUL or FAILED). The check-status Lambda operate runs in a loop with a ready situation (for instance, 30 seconds) between calls.
• Parallelism: Configure an satisfactory stage of parallelism to regulate the amount of API calls carried out by the steps in your workflow, particularly on the generate-bundle step that calls the DescribeAssetBundleExportJob and StartAssetBundleExportJob APIs, which have low concurrent price limits. You need to use the inline map state MaxConcurrency area to restrict the variety of concurrent runs of the generate-bundle step.
• Error dealing with: Step Capabilities permits you to outline catch blocks and retry insurance policies at every stage. A failure in a single step (for instance, an unsupported asset sort) doesn’t abort your complete backup run.
• Value: When scheduling is enabled, prices scale with backup frequency and retention interval. For steering on estimating storage prices, see the Value estimation part.

Value estimation

The next sections estimate the prices of operating the backup software on Amazon S3 (for asset bundles) and DynamoDB (for consumer and group metadata).

Amazon S3: asset bundle storage

Asset bundles are compressed ZIP recordsdata uploaded to Amazon S3 after every export job. Based mostly on the answer design, every bundle of as much as 100 property averages roughly 500 KB when compressed.

Key takeaway: Amazon S3 storage prices for asset bundles are minimal. Even for very massive Fast Sight deployments with hundreds of property, the compressed bundle measurement stays within the low megabytes vary, leading to a month-to-month storage price effectively under $0.01.

Amazon DynamoDB: consumer and group metadata storage

Person and group info is saved in DynamoDB tables with date-based suffixes to protect backup historical past. DynamoDB storage is priced at roughly $0.25 per GB per thirty days (Customary desk class, on-demand mode).

Every merchandise saved in DynamoDB represents a single consumer or group definition (together with all related attributes resembling ARN, e-mail, function, group memberships, and backup timestamp). Based mostly on the schema described on this submit, the common merchandise measurement is roughly 256 KB.

You need to use this method to estimate the scale of your DynamoDB tables:

Desk measurement estimate = Variety of objects × Common merchandise measurement (256 KB)

Key takeaway: For small and medium organizations, DynamoDB storage prices stay minimal (below $0.10 per thirty days per backup snapshot). For big organizations with tens of hundreds of customers, prices are nonetheless modest, within the low single-digit greenback vary per snapshot.

Abstract

For a single, unscheduled backup run, the whole AWS price is successfully close to zero, dominated by a couple of cents of Amazon S3 and DynamoDB storage at most. If you happen to implement scheduled backups (coated within the Scheduled execution part), prices scale linearly with backup frequency and retention interval. Even with day by day backups retained for 90 days, complete storage prices stay within the low single-digit greenback vary for many deployments. Think about using Amazon S3 Lifecycle insurance policies and DynamoDB Customary-IA to optimize prices as your backup historical past grows.

Conclusion

On this submit, we coated tips on how to design and implement a complete backup technique for Amazon Fast Sight property so you may keep enterprise continuity, meet regulatory necessities, and defend towards information loss.

We coated tips on how to use AssetsAsBundle APIs to programmatically export and protect vital BI property, together with dashboards, analyses, datasets, and information sources, together with their dependencies and permissions. That will help you get began, this submit features a pattern automation software that you would be able to take a look at and adapt to your group’s wants. The code orchestrates these APIs, shops asset bundles in Amazon S3, and preserves consumer and group info in DynamoDB for point-in-time restoration.

Prepared to guard your Fast Sight BI property? Get began at this time by cloning the pattern backup software from the AWS Samples repository and testing it in your non-production setting. Start with a easy configuration to again up your most crucial dashboards, then broaden to a production-ready backup technique as you validate the method. To be taught extra about Amazon Fast Sight, see the Amazon Fast Sight Person Information.

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