Backup & Restore no longer on AWS S3 customer accounts

[Dirk Küver-Christen]

Dear Forum, dear Atlassian,

I have to ask a question that is currently relevant to us: why has the option to save backups in your own AWS account been discontinued? The feature was so good that we promoted it to customers and now it is no longer available.

I can no longer describe Atlassian's business model as customer-friendly. Rather, it is working against partners and customers.
I would like to understand: so why cut all the good features and flood us with useless stuff?

Best regards

Dirk

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Dirk Küver-Christen 

I don't have any special insight into why Atlassian chose to discontinue the feature. I see though that your post tags indicate you are on an Enterprise plan. Have you considered asking your Enterprise account manager or advocate?

[Dirk Küver-Christen]

We will contact our partner manager, however, as always, the chances of anything happening in our favor are very slim.

At this point, I would like to see a newsletter, especially for org admins, that lists such technical aspects early on and provides sufficient information (with alternatives).

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello @Dirk Küver-Christen 

Please take a look here : https://support.atlassian.com/organization-administration/docs/activate-a-policy 

That’s exactly why this hurts, you weren’t using “S3 to your own AWS account” as a nice-to-have, you were using it as a customer-facing promise.

To answer your question directly: Atlassian has stopped offering the “store backups in the customer’s own AWS S3 account” option for new setups in the current Backup & Restore approach. In other words: if you didn’t already have it enabled before, you can’t just turn it on again now. The only cases where it still works are typically grandfathered ones (customers who had it in place earlier).

The new Backup & Restore model is centered on Atlassian-owned storage with defined retention (they state backups are stored for 30 days in Atlassian storage).

So it’s not something you configured wrong, it’s a product decision/change, and yes, it impacts partners because it removes a feature we could genuinely sell.

What you can do now:

Check if you/your customers is grandfathered: if the customer had S3 configured historically, Atlassian may still allow it to continue.

If not grandfathered: your options are basically

accept the Atlassian-managed backup storage model, or

move to a third-party backup / export-based approach for customers who require “customer-owned storage”.

And because you’re Enterprise: I’d raise this through Enterprise Support and ask for an official statement you can reuse with customers (why it was removed + what Atlassian recommends as the replacement pattern). That’s the only way you’ll get something solid you can put in front of a customer security/compliance team.

[Dirk Küver-Christen]

That's precisely the point I want to understand: why was this decision made? What's wrong with using our own S3 storage, especially if it's located in the same region?

As an enterprise customer, we've been using this feature since the beta phase and are more than satisfied. Why would they simply scrap something like this?

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

@Dirk Küver-Christen 

Only Atlassian can answer that. As the Atlassian/Jira administrator and end-to-end ownerand also a Bachelor Professional in Business Administration Controlling so i quite understand Business Aspect.

My view is that the reason is quite clear: they developed their own backup & restore solution and are now offering it as a paid product.

[Daria Kulikova_GitProtect_io]

Hi @Dirk Küver-Christen ,

It's completely understandable your concern here, especially if this capability was something you relied on and recommended to customers. Being able to store backups in your own S3 bucket is not just a convenience feature; for many organizations, it can be an important part of security, compliance, and data ownership strategies.

Unfortunately, only Atlassian can explain the reasoning behind removing the option to use your own AWS storage.

In situations where organizations need full control over backup location and retention, some teams explore alternative approaches, such as third-party backup solutions that allow storing backups in their own infrastructure. This can help maintain existing compliance or internal policy requirements when native options are limited.

There’s also a good article on the Atlassian Community about the importance of backup practices, one of which is storage control: https://community.atlassian.com/forums/App-Central-articles/Jira-Regular-Backups-and-Issue-History-Tracking-Must-Haves-to/ba-p/2651784