How to access AWS ElasticSearch Service automated snapshots/backups?

Question

I was under the impression AWS ElasticSearch service comes with automated snaphshots/backups. Thats what I find in the documentation. It suggests they happen once a day and are stored on s3 but I do not see any backups in any of my s3 buckets. How do you get access to the automated snapshots?

It probably doesn't matter but I used the following template to create my elasticsearch domain explicitly indicating I want automated backups.

CloudFormation

"SnapshotOptions": {
    "AutomatedSnapshotStartHour": "0"
}

Answer 1

You can't get to the S3 bucket itself but you can restore from the backup stored inside it by using CURL or another HTTP client to communicate directly with your cluster telling it to rebuild from the "cs-automated" repository which is linked to the s3 snapshots. To be able to communicate with your ES cluster directly via HTTP you'll have to temporarily open an IP access policy to your cluster.

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/es-managedomains-snapshots.html#es-managedomains-snapshot-restore