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Elastic Disaster Recovery FAQ - AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
What source infrastructure does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support?Can I upgrade from CloudEndure Disaster Recovery to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?Can AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery protect physical servers?What data is stored on and transmitted through AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery servers?What is the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?What is the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?What to consider when replicating Active DirectoryDoes AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery work with LVM and RAID configurations?Do Replication Servers have the SSM agent installed on them?What is there to note regarding SAN/NAS Support?Does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support Windows License Migration?Can you perform an OS (Operating System) upgrade with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?What are the private APIs used by AWS DRS to define actions in the IAM Policy?What post-launch scripts does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support?Is BitLocker encryption supported?Can I set instance metadata on my launched instance to support IMDSv2 only?

Elastic Disaster Recovery FAQ

What source infrastructure does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support?

With AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery, you can recover applications on AWS from physical infrastructure, virtual machines, and other clouds. These source servers must use the x86_64 architecture. You must be able to install the AWS Replication Agent and run the Failback Client. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery also supports 64-bit Arm (arm64) Linux source servers on AWS Graviton-based Amazon EC2 instances. Elastic Disaster Recovery supports arm64 only for AWS-to-AWS recovery. See AWS DRS supported Linux operating systems.

Can I upgrade from CloudEndure Disaster Recovery to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?

CloudEndure Disaster Recovery was discontinued on September 29, 2025, in all AWS Regions except the China Regions. There is no upgrade path from CloudEndure Disaster Recovery to AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. To protect your servers with Elastic Disaster Recovery, follow the getting started procedure.

Can AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery protect physical servers?

Because AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery works at the OS layer it can protect not only virtual servers but physical ones as well.

What data is stored on and transmitted through AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery servers?

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery stores only configuration and log data on the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery Console's encrypted database. Replicated data is always stored on the customer’s own cloud VPC. The replicated data is encrypted in transit.

What is the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of Elastic Disaster Recovery is typically measured in minutes. The RTO is highly dependent on the OS boot time.

What is the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?

The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery is typically in the sub-second range.

What to consider when replicating Active Directory

There are two main approaches when it comes to migrating Active Directory or domain controllers from a disaster:

  1. Replicating the entire environment, including the AD server(s) - in this approach it is recommended to launch the drill or recovery AD servers first, wait until it's up and running and then launch the other drill or recovery instances, to make sure the AD servers are ready to authenticate them.

  2. Leaving the AD server(s) in the Source environment - in this approach, the drill or recovery instances will communicate back to the AD server in the source environment and will take the source server's place in the AD automatically.

    In this case, it is important to conduct any drills using an isolated subnet in the AWS cloud, so to avoid having the drill or recovery instances communicate into the source AD server outside of a recovery.

Does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery work with LVM and RAID configurations?

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery works with any hardware RAID configuration and LVM configuration.

Note

Boot partitions that span or mirror, using software over multiple physical disks, are not supported by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery and are not recommended for use in EC2. If your source server's configuration contains mirrored boot partition (e.g. Windows Mirrored Disks), we recommend installing the agent to replicate only one physical disk of the mirrored boot partition using the --devices parameter.

Do Replication Servers have the SSM agent installed on them?

The SSM agent is intentionally not installed on these servers as part of our security architecture to maintain isolation and prevent any potential unauthorized access paths.

What is there to note regarding SAN/NAS Support?

If the disks are represented as block devices on the machine, as most SAN are, Elastic Disaster Recovery will replicate them transparently, just like actual local disks.

If the disks are mounted over the network, such as an NFS share, as most NAS implementations are, the AWS Replication Agent would need to be installed on the actual NFS server in order to replicate the disk.

Does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support Windows License Migration?

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery conforms to the Microsoft Licensing on AWS guidelines.

Can you perform an OS (Operating System) upgrade with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery?

No. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery copies the entire machine as-is. However, you can copy the data disks exclusively and attach them to a new machine with an upgraded OS.

What are the private APIs used by AWS DRS to define actions in the IAM Policy?

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) utilizes the following private API resources as actions in the IAM Policy. Learn more about actions, resources, and condition keys for Elastic Disaster Recovery.

  • BatchCreateVolumeSnapshotGroupForDRS – Grants permission to create volume snapshot group.

  • BatchDeleteSnapshotRequestForDRS – Grants permission to batch delete snapshot request.

  • DescribeReplicationServerAssociationsForDRS – Grants permission to describe replication server associations.

  • DescribeSnapshotRequestsForDRS – Grants permission to describe snapshots requests.

  • GetAgentCommandForDRS – Grants permission to get agent command.

  • GetAgentConfirmedResumeInfoForDRS – Grants permission to get agent confirmed resume info.

  • GetAgentInstallationAssetsForDRS – Grants permission to get agent installation assets.

  • GetAgentReplicationInfoForDRS – Grants permission to get agent replication info.

  • GetAgentRuntimeConfigurationForDRS – Grants permission to get agent runtime configuration.

  • GetAgentSnapshotCreditsForDRS – Grants permission to get agent snapshots credits.

  • GetChannelCommandsForDRS – Grants permission to get channel commands.

  • NotifyAgentAuthenticationForDRS – Grants permission to notify agent authentication.

  • NotifyAgentConnectedForDRS – Grants permission to notify agent is connected.

  • NotifyAgentDisconnectedForDRS – Grants permission to notify agent is disconnected

  • NotifyAgentReplicationProgressForDRS – Grants permission to notify agent replication progress.

  • RegisterAgentForDRS – Grants permission to register agent.

  • SendAgentLogsForDRS – Grants permission to send agent logs.

  • SendAgentMetricsForDRS – Grants permission to send agent metrics.

  • SendChannelCommandResultForDRS – Grants permission to send channel command result.

  • SendClientLogsForDRS – Grants permission to send client logs.

  • SendClientMetricsForDRS – Grants permission to send client metrics.

  • UpdateAgentBacklogForDRS – Grants permission to update agent backlog.

  • UpdateAgentConversionInfoForDRS – Grants permission to update agent conversion info.

  • UpdateAgentReplicationInfoForDRS – Grants permission to update agent replication info.

  • UpdateAgentSourcePropertiesForDRS – Grants permission to update agent source properties.

  • IssueAgentCertificateForDrs – Grants permission to issue an agent certificate.

  • CreateConvertedSnapshotForDrs – Grants permission to create converted snapshot.

What post-launch scripts does AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery support?

DRS can run scripts on a launched drill or recovery instance. This is done by creating the following folder on the source server and placing the scripts within that folder.

Linux: /boot/post_launch (any files that are marked as executable)

Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\AWS Replication Agent\post_launch\ (any .exe, .cmd, or .bat files)

Once you put these scripts in the above folders on the source server, the folder will be replicated to the drill or recovery instance and be executed once after the instance boots for the first time.

Note

Post-launch scripts on Windows run under the Local System context. Post-launch scripts on Linux run under the 'root' user.

Is BitLocker encryption supported?

DRS does not support OS-based disk encryption features such as BitLocker. These should be deactivated before using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery.

Can I set instance metadata on my launched instance to support IMDSv2 only?

You can easily set Instance Metadata Service Version 2 (IMDSv2) on your recovery instances using the EC2 launch template associated with your DRS source server.

Follow the instructions on the EC2 launch template page.

When you are redirected to the EC2 console to modify your template, take the following steps

  • Click Advanced details > Metadata version.

  • Select V2 only (token required).

You can then set this launch template as your default version.