Create Amazon EBS snapshots
To create an application-consistent snapshot, see Create a VSS application-consistent snapshot Restore volumes from VSS-enabled EBS snapshots.
You can create a point-in-time snapshot of an EBS volume and use it as a baseline for new volumes or for data backup. If you make periodic snapshots of a volume, the snapshots are incremental—the new snapshot saves only the blocks that have changed since your last snapshot.
Snapshots occur asynchronously; the point-in-time snapshot is created immediately,
but the
status of the snapshot is pending until the snapshot is complete (when all of the
modified blocks have been transferred to Amazon S3), which can take several hours
for large initial
snapshots or subsequent snapshots where many blocks have changed. While it is completing,
an
in-progress snapshot is not affected by ongoing reads and writes to the volume.
You can take a snapshot of an attached volume that is in use. However, snapshots only
capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume at the time the snapshot
command is
issued. This might exclude any data that has been cached by any applications or the
operating
system. If you can pause any file writes to the volume long enough to take a snapshot,
your
snapshot should be complete. However, if you can't pause all file writes to the volume,
you
should unmount the volume from within the instance, issue the snapshot command, and
then
remount the volume to ensure a consistent and complete snapshot. You can remount and
use your
volume while the snapshot status is pending.
To make snapshot management easier, you can tag your snapshots during creation or add tags afterward. For example, you can apply tags describing the original volume from which the snapshot was created, or the device name that was used to attach the original volume to an instance. For more information, see Tag your Amazon EC2 resources.
Snapshot encryption
Snapshots that are taken from encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted. Volumes that are created from encrypted snapshots are also automatically encrypted. The data in your encrypted volumes and any associated snapshots is protected both at rest and in motion. For more information, see Amazon EBS encryption.
By default, only you can create volumes from snapshots that you own. However, you can share your unencrypted snapshots with specific AWS accounts, or you can share them with the entire AWS community by making them public. For more information, see Share an Amazon EBS snapshot.
You can share an encrypted snapshot only with specific AWS accounts. For others to use your shared, encrypted snapshot, you must also share the CMK key that was used to encrypt it. Users with access to your encrypted snapshot must create their own personal copy of it and then use that copy. Your copy of a shared, encrypted snapshot can also be re-encrypted using a different key. For more information, see Share an Amazon EBS snapshot.
Multi-volume snapshots
You can create multi-volume snapshots, which are point-in-time snapshots for all EBS volumes attached to an EC2 instance. You can also create lifecycle policies to automate the creation and retention of multi-volume snapshots. For more information, see Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.
After the snapshots are created, each snapshot is treated as an individual snapshot. You can perform all snapshot operations, such as restore, delete, and copy across Regions or accounts, just as you would with a single volume snapshot. You can also tag your multi-volume snapshots as you would a single volume snapshot. We recommend you tag your multiple volume snapshots to manage them collectively during restore, copy, or retention.
Multi-volume, crash-consistent snapshots are typically restored as a set. It is helpful to identify the snapshots that are in a crash-consistent set by tagging your set with the instance ID, name, or other relevant details. You can also choose to automatically copy tags from the source volume to the corresponding snapshots. This helps you to set the snapshot metadata, such as access policies, attachment information, and cost allocation, to match the source volume.
After creating your snapshots, they appear in your EC2 console created at the exact point-in-time.
If any one snapshot for the multi-volume snapshot set fails, all of the other snapshots
display an error status and a createSnapshots CloudWatch event with a result of
failed is sent to your AWS account. For more information, see
Create snapshots (createSnapshots).
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager
You can create, retain, and delete snapshots manually, or you can use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager to manage your snapshots for you. For more information, see Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.
Considerations
The following considerations apply to creating snapshots:
-
When you create a snapshot for an EBS volume that serves as a root device, you should stop the instance before taking the snapshot.
-
You cannot create snapshots from instances for which hibernation is enabled.
-
You cannot create snapshots from hibernated instances.
-
Although you can take a snapshot of a volume while a previous snapshot of that volume is in the
pendingstatus, having multiplependingsnapshots of a volume can result in reduced volume performance until the snapshots complete. -
There is a limit of one
pendingsnapshot for a singlest1orsc1volume, or fivependingsnapshots for a single volume of the other volume types. If you receive aConcurrentSnapshotLimitExceedederror while trying to create multiple concurrent snapshots of the same volume, wait for one or more of thependingsnapshots to complete before creating another snapshot of that volume. -
When a snapshot is created from a volume with an AWS Marketplace product code, the product code is propagated to the snapshot.
Create a snapshot
To create a snapshot from the specified volume, use one of the following methods.
Create a multi-volume snapshot
To create a snapshot from the volumes of an instance, use one of the following methods.
If all of the snapshots complete successfully, a createSnapshots CloudWatch event
with a result of succeeded is sent to your AWS account. If any one snapshot for
the multi-volume snapshot set fails, all of the other snapshots display an error status
and a
createSnapshots CloudWatch event with a result of failed is sent to your
AWS account. For more information, see Create snapshots (createSnapshots).
Work with EBS snapshots
You can copy snapshots, share snapshots, and create volumes from snapshots. For more information, see the following:
