EBS Snapshots: Easy, Secure Block Storage Data Protection

Amazon EBS Snapshots: Easy, safe data protection for block storage.

Amazon EBS Snapshots: What are they?

Your data can be backed up using Amazon EBS snapshots. Only the volume blocks that have changed since the last snapshot are saved in a snapshot, which is an incremental backup. By preventing data duplication, this lowers snapshot creation time and storage expenses.

Snapshots are stored in unreachable places in Amazon S3 buckets. The Amazon EC2 console or API can be used to create and maintain snapshots. Snapshots cannot be accessed with the Amazon S3 API or interface.

All the information required to restore your data to a new EBS volume is included in each snapshot. An exact replica of the snapshot volume is an EBS volume generated from it.

Why Take EBS Snapshots?

Block storage data, such as boot volumes, EBS volumes, and on-premises block data, may be easily and securely protected with Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots. EBS Snapshots provide a snapshot of your data for backup compliance, data movement between accounts and regions, and disaster recovery.

EBS Snapshots can be created and managed via the AWS Management Console, CLI, or SDKs. With Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) and Amazon EBS Snapshots, you can set up rules to automate snapshot lifecycle management. With incremental EBS snapshots, you only have to pay for blocks that have been altered.

Advantages

Simple to use and automated

It makes EBS volume backups easier. Snapshots are automatically stored on Amazon S3 for later usage. The lifecycle management of your snapshots is further streamlined by AWS's interface with DLM, which lets you set up policies that automate different tasks including snapshot creation, deletion, retention, and sharing. By automatically deleting outdated backups in compliance with your specified policies, DLM reduces storage costs and the operational burden of snapshot management.

Economical

Amazon EBS snapshots are incremental, preserving only the changes since the last snapshot, making them affordable and ideal for routine backups. Using tools like AWS Cost Explorer, you can keep an eye on snapshot consumption and charges and, if needed, further optimize storage costs. Save up to 75% on snapshot storage costs by using the EBS Snapshots Archive for the long-term (over 90 days) retention of rarely viewed snapshots. Additionally, because you don't have to anticipate or plan for the future, a pay-as-you-go cloud model significantly reduces your capital investment.

Protect

Amazon EBS offers a simple encryption solution for your EBS resources, saving you the trouble of building, maintaining, and protecting your own key management infrastructure. It's easy to set up your AWS account to encrypt new EBS volumes and snapshots, including snapshots of your on-premises data. Additionally, you may prevent unauthorized access to your data by restricting who can view your EBS Snapshots. You can also lock your EBS snapshots to stop accidental or deliberate removals.

Extremely accessible and robust

Amazon EBS Snapshots makes it simple to backup your EBS volumes. The snapshots are automatically stored for later usage on Amazon S3. The 99.99999999% (11 nines) durability design of S3 will make it easier to access your EBS snapshots. By allowing for the one-click or API-call recovery of accidentally deleted snapshots, Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots increases durability. By keeping the original's status information and descriptions intact, a recovered snapshot enables you to swiftly and easily restore your snapshot back to production.

Applications

Recovery from Disasters

With Amazon EBS Snapshots, you can improve disaster recovery processes for your workloads running on-premises and on AWS at a fair price. It is possible to take direct snapshots of EBS volumes or data on-premises, which can then be utilized for cloud recovery. You can quickly restore data from these snapshots into EBS volumes and achieve minimal recovery time targets by utilizing the Fast Snapshot Restore feature.

Transfer of data

Amazon EBS Snapshots make it easy to move data between accounts, regions, and availability zones. You can copy any available snapshot, including ones you've taken or that have been shared with you, to a new location or account. AWS Machine Images (AMIs), which are offered on the AWS Marketplace and may be used to launch new EC2 instances in various accounts or regions, can also be created by copying snapshots. By collecting snapshots of your on-premises data and recovering it into EBS volumes, you may also transfer it to AWS.

Conformance of backup

Amazon EBS Snapshots helps you protect your valuable data by enforcing a regular backup schedule through the use of DLM settings. You could create policies mandating backups be stored on file in case auditors request them in order to improve internal compliance. By integrating EBS Snapshots with AWS CloudTrail, you can also log, monitor, and save account activity related to activities created for your snapshots.

Pricing for Amazon EBS

Amazon EBS only charges for the services you render. All EBS volume types have monthly GB provisioning charges for volume storage until they are released. EBS volumes that support higher IOPs and throughput than baseline result in higher costs.

Pricing for Amazon EBS Snapshots

Amazon EBS snapshots are copies of your block data taken at a specific moment in time. Because EBS snapshots in the Standard tier are stored progressively, you are only billed for the updated blocks that are stored. Since EBS Snapshots in the Archive tier are full copies of your block data, you are billed for all of the blocks stored, not just the updated blocks. In the Archive tier, snapshots must be kept for a minimum of 90 days. Archived images that are deleted or permanently restored to the Standard tier before the 90-day period will be charged a prorated price equal to the storage amount for the remaining days. There are extra charges for retrievals from the Archive tier.

EBS Snapshots Storage Pricing
Standard	$0.05/GB-month
Archive	$0.0125/GB-month
EBS Snapshots Restore Pricing
Standard	Free
Archive	$0.03 per GB of data retrieved

EBS Snapshot Recycling Bin

EBS Snapshots' Recycle Bin guards against accidental removals. Amazon Snapshots and Recycle Bin EBS Snapshots are equally priced.

Rapid Amazon EBS Snapshot Restore

With Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR), you may rapidly restore fully provisioned EBS volumes from snapshots, regardless of the size of the volume or snapshot. FSR can be activated on snapshots that you own or that have been shared with you. All Availability Zones with FSR enabled and each snapshot are paid in Data Services Unit-Hours (DSU-Hours). DSUs require a billing rate per minute and a minimum of one hour. You will continue to be charged for an FSR-enabled snapshot until you disable it.