What's the easiest way to back up EC2 instances automatically?

I'm worried I might log in one day and my fully configured instance has been removed. I would like to be able to back it up daily to S3 but frustratingly this is not a simple setting in the console.

Is there a simple managed solution that can take care of backups, and should the unthinkable happen, allow me to simple restore it straight away?

Solution 1:

Best way is to use an EBS backed instance - you'll pay a little extra for the EBS storage, but it's worth it for the peace of mind. Use one of the available EBS backed AMIs, or follow this Server Fault answer to roll your own from a running instance.

Solution 2:

I'd like to recommend my open source tool "ec2-automate-backup" in combination - the tool will snapshot one or more than one EBS volumes - your server (or servers) can then be restored from these snapshots - the tool is available at http://awsmissingtools.com