Worker Placement Considerations

Summary

Defines what workers are, and the core requirements for restore operations, as well as considerations for launching workers in a different VPC than the restore target.

Description

Worker Overview

Workers are temporary compute resources used to perform restore operations, data transfers, volume attachment and processing, and cleanup tasks. Workers are ephemeral and terminate automatically after the operation completes.

Worker Placement

Workers can be launched either within the same VPC as the restore target, or another VPC as long as it meets requirements. The appropriate choice depends on setup complexity, cost attribution, and isolation requirements.  Our recommendation is running workers in the target VPC.

Requirements:

The following apply regardless of worker VPC placement for restores:

• The worker subnet must be in the same AZ as the restore target
• The worker must have outbound HTTPS (port 443) access to AWS APIs
• The worker must have IAM permissions to operate in the target account

 Cost and Billing Considerations:

All worker-related costs are billed to the account where the worker is launched. This includes compute runtime, temporary storage attached during operations, and any associated data transfer.

Data transfer costs depend on where the worker is launched relative to the data source. Launching workers in a different VPC, account, or Availability Zone than the underlying data may introduce additional transfer charges (for example, cross-AZ or cross-VPC traffic).

Comparison

Category	Worker in separate VPC	Worker in target VPC
Setup Effort	Requires additional VPC and subnet configuration	Simpler, uses existing target VPC setup
Billing Visibility	Costs may be separate from the restored workload	Costs align with the restored workload
Network Requirement	Must have HTTPS (443) access to AWS APIs	Same requirement
IAM Requirement	Must have permissions to operate in the target account	Uses local account permissions
Availability Zone	Must match restore target AZ	Must match restore target AZ
Data Transfer Considerations	May introduce cross-AZ or cross-VPC transfer depending on placement	Typically minimized when aligned with target resources
Isolation	Worker runs outside the target VPC	Worker runs within the target VPC