Amazon EBS persistent block storage for Amazon EC2 instances

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides scalable, high-performance block storage resources that can be used with Amazon EC2 instances. With Amazon EBS, you can create and manage the following block storage resources:

• Amazon EBS volumes — These are storage volumes that you attach to Amazon EC2 instances. After you attach a volume to an instance, you can use it in the same way you would use block storage. The instance can interact with the volume just as it would with a local drive.

• Amazon EBS snapshots — These are point-in-time backups of Amazon EBS volumes that persist independently from the volume itself. You can create snapshots to back up the data on your Amazon EBS volumes. You can then restore new volumes from those snapshots at any time.

You can create and attach EBS volumes to an instance during launch, and you can create and attach EBS volumes to an instance at any time after launch. You can also increase the size or performance of your EBS volumes without detaching the volume or restarting your instance.

You can create EBS snapshots from an EBS volume at any time after creation. You can use EBS snapshots to back up the data stored on your volumes. You can then use those snapshots to instantly restore volumes, or to migrate data across AWS accounts, AWS Regions, or Availability Zones. You can use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager or AWS Backup to automate the creation, retention, and deletion of your EBS snapshots.

For more information about working with volumes and snapshots, see the Amazon EBS User Guide.