EBS Snapshots

EBS snapshots are incremental point-in-time copy of data of EBS volumes, stored in Amazon S3, that contain all the information needed to restore in case of disaster-recovery or for data migration across regions and accounts.

Terraform Name

aws_ebs_snapshot

EBS Snapshots

attributes:

volume_id - (Required) The Volume ID of which to make a snapshot.
description - (Optional) A description of what the snapshot is.
outpost_arn - (Optional) The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the Outpost on which to create a local snapshot.
storage_tier - (Optional) The name of the storage tier. Valid values are archive and standard. Default value is standard.
permanent_restore - (Optional) Indicates whether to permanently restore an archived snapshot.
temporary_restore_days - (Optional) Specifies the number of days for which to temporarily restore an archived snapshot. Required for temporary restores only. The snapshot will be automatically re-archived after this period.
tags - (Optional) A map of tags to assign to the snapshot. If configured with a provider default_tags configuration block present, tags with matching keys will overwrite those defined at the provider-level.

Associating resources with a

EBS Snapshots

Resources do not "belong" to a

EBS Snapshots

Rather, one or more Security Groups are associated to a resource.

Create

EBS Snapshots

via Terraform:

The following HCL creates an EBS snapshot from an EBS volume

Syntax:

resource "aws_ebs_volume" "example" {
availability_zone = "us-west-2a"
size = 40

tags = {
Name = "HelloWorld"
}
}

resource "aws_ebs_snapshot" "example_snapshot" {
volume_id = aws_ebs_volume.example.id

tags = {
Name = "HelloWorld_snap"
}
}

‍

Create

EBS Snapshots

via CLI:

Parameters:

create-snapshot
[--description <value>]
[--outpost-arn <value>]
--volume-id <value>
[--tag-specifications <value>]
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]
[--debug]
[--endpoint-url <value>]
[--no-verify-ssl]
[--no-paginate]
[--output <value>]
[--query <value>]
[--profile <value>]
[--region <value>]
[--version <value>]
[--color <value>]
[--no-sign-request]
[--ca-bundle <value>]
[--cli-read-timeout <value>]
[--cli-connect-timeout <value>]
[--cli-binary-format <value>]
[--no-cli-pager]
[--cli-auto-prompt]
[--no-cli-auto-prompt]

Example:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description 'Prod backup' --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=snapshot,Tags=[{Key=purpose,Value=prod},{Key=costcenter,Value=123}]'

‍

Costs

The cost of using Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots in Amazon Web Services (AWS) depends on the amount of data stored and the amount of data transferred. For storage, you are charged based on the amount of data stored in your EBS snapshots. The cost of storage varies depending on the region you are using. For data transfer, you are charged based on the amount of data transferred in and out of your EBS snapshots. The cost of data transfer varies depending on the region you are using.

Direct Cost

<Region>-EBS:SnapshotUsage

Indirect Cost

No items found.

Best Practices for

EBS Snapshots

Categorized by Availability, Security & Compliance and Cost

Medium

AMI (Amazon Machine Images) not in use

AWS Cost Optimization

EBS Snapshots

Terraform Name

Costs

Indirect Cost

Hands-on Guide: How to Find and Remove Orphaned EBS Snapshots