AWS EBS (Elastic Block Store) Snapshot

Data is the most important thing anywhere over the internet. Everyone wants to be more secure and save when it comes to their Data security. Data on your Amazon EBS volume can also be back up to Amazon S3 Bucket by taking a point-in-time Snapshot. Snapshots can be used to create a backup of critical workloads, such as a large database or a file system that spans across multiple EBS volumes.

Amazon EBS Snapshots

EBS Snapshots are point-in-time images or copies of your EBS Volume. These are stored on S3, which can be accessed through Elastic Cloud Computing APIs or AWS Console. While EBS volumes are availability zone (AZ's) specific but, Snapshots are Region-specific.  Your Snapshot size must be either same or larger than the size of the original volume from which the snapshot is taken. As per Amazon, each AWS account can have a maximum of up to 5000 images or copies Volumes and up to 10,000 EBS Snapshots created. A snapshot, when created, shows a 'pending ' status, which then converts into 'complete' once the snapshot creation is successful.

How Do Snapshots Work?

Snapshot is a backup of root storage that is attached to the EC2-Instance to know how to create AWS EC-instance refer to Amazon EC2 – Creating an Elastic Cloud Compute Instance. The snapshot which you are going to take at first it consist of all the data which is present in the EBS eventually snapshots you are going to take will consist only the data which is newly added and this snapshots are also called incremental snapshots.

AWS will chanrge you based on the amount of data is going to be backed up in single snapshot. Snapshot source volume will not decide the cost will decide by the amount of data is being backed up. For example if size of EBS volume is 100 GiB and the data you have been backed up is 60 GiB using snapshot then amazon will only charges you for the 60 GiB only.

Copy And Share Snapshots

The data which was been backed up using AWS snapshots will stored in the same region where the EBS volume if located. Snapshots are region contains if you want to share the snapshots across the regions then you need to perform some configurations like enabling multi-region options and so on.

Sharing the snapshots across the multiple AWS accounts can also be achieved by managing the permissions

Encryption Support For Snapshots

• Snapshots and the volumes which are created by using each them will be in the state of encryption form.
• The snapshots which is copied from the un-encrypted snapshots can be un-encrypted while the process of coping.
• If the snapshots is already encrypted before you copy you can re-encrypted the snapshots with the different keys based on your requirements.
• The EBS volume created by using the encrypted snapshots then the volume will also be in encrypted format.

Benefits of AWS Snapshots

Some benefits of AWS Snapshots are listed below:

1. Automation: The data stored in the AWS EBS will be dynamical meas the data will continuously added to the volume so instead of performing manually you can automate the whole processes like you can set the timer in the snapshots configuration while creating AWS snapshots then snapshots will be automatically with in the certain intervals of time.
2. Cost-effective: The design of AWS Snapshots will make them effective for the cost wise. Because AWS snapshots will follow the incremental type which the data added new to the existing storage will only been taken as an snapshots not the entire data. The pricing will only depends on the amount of data have been backed up.
3. Secure: The data which is been backed up using AWS snapshots will have an encryption and also you can re-encrypt the snapshots depending on the requirement.
4. High Availability: The snapshots which we have taken will directly stored to amazon S3 for long term purpose. S3 is designed for 99.99999999% (11 nines) durability, ensuring higher availability of your EBS Snapshots.

Use Cases Of AWS Snapshot

1. Backup and restore: Main purpose of amazon snapshot is to take the backup of EBS volumes in the form of encryption by which you can avoid the loss of data and also if any accidental deletion will happen you will be in safer side.
2. Disaster Recovery: It is an rare case scenario in AWS but if any disaster was occurred in the region where you configured the data then you can recover it back by using AWS snapshots.
3. Testing and Development: Environments for testing and development can be built using Amazon EBS snapshots. This is a useful method for testing new setups or software without disrupting your live environment.

Steps To Create Amazon EBS snapshots

Step 1: To create a snapshot of a volume, simply select the AWS console's Volumes container, right-click on the volume and choose the Create Snapshot option from the shortcut menu.

Step 2: After entering the description of the snapshot, click Create to create the snapshot.

Step 3: A popup will come stating the snapshot creation as started.

Step 4: You can view the snapshot's status on the console's Snapshots tab.

One can not only create a snapshot but also can copy the already created snapshot. This copied snapshot can be shared with other accounts. If you share a snapshot with another account, then that person cannot directly create volume out of the shared snapshots. For creating volume from such a snapshot that person first needs to copy the snapshot so that the snapshot is now owned by him and can then create a volume out of it. Both encrypted and un-encrypted snapshots can be shared within the different AWS accounts. But, if you try to copy an encrypted snapshot without having the permissions to the encryption key, the copy process will "fail silently".

How to Delete AWS Snapshot?

1. Open the Amazon EC2 console ..
2. Choose Snapshots in the navigation pane.
3. Select a snapshot and then choose Delete from the Actions list.
4. Choose Yes, Delete.