What You need to Know Before Getting AWS EBS automatic snapshots

Posted by alvina on February 27th, 2018

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced the Elastic Block Store (EBS) that allows users to capture real-time snapshots. These AWS EBS snapshots are of user’s volumes and can be used to save multiple volumes, increase the size and move volumes through Availability Zones. The EBS snapshot scheduler allows for automatic creation and deletion of problematic snapshots.

The EBS snapshot scheduler makes use of existing resources such as AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and AWS Lambda to allow customers to automatically generate snapshots. The schedule is determined by the customer. The AWS EBS system is easy to use and delivers automated backups that help with protection and data recovery. A basic scenario of the EBS snapshot scheduler is where a company creates snapshots on a daily schedule and then schedule these snapshots to be deleted after a defined period of time. An automated system improves recovery and data protection of existing systems and for companies that have no processes in place.

EBS snapshot pricing

The price of snapshot storage is charged according to the amount of space the data takes up on Amazon S3. Due to the fact that EBS does not store empty blocks of data, you are guaranteed that the size of the snapshot will be a lot less than the volume size. EBS will save a complete copy of your first snapshot on Amazon S3. Thereafter, only the amended part of the volume is saved.

When you copy an EBS snapshot, you are only charged for the data transfer that is done across regions. Afterward, standard EBS prices are charged for storage in the transferred region. Basically, AWS EBS snapshot pricing is calculated on snapshot volumes and any data that is transferred.

Operation Guide

AWS EBS volumes can vary in size ranging from 1 GB right up to 16 TB and are produced in a chosen Availability Zone. When the volume is produced you can attach it to an EC2 instance. The volume will be seen as a mounted device that same way any hard drive or another block device will be viewed. It is then that the instance can interact with the volume as it would with a drive.

You are only allowed to attach one volume at a time but you can repeat the process several times to the instance. This is great for database style systems. Should an instance fail, you can remove it from EBS and attach it to another instance in a particular Availability Zone.

AWS EBS is a wonderful additional feature of AWS. It gives developers an opportunity to increase capacity, change the types of volumes stored, tune performance and have volumes with no impact on performance or downtime. Developers can now easily adapt to changes and properly size your deployment.