AWS automatic EC2 snapshots

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It is possible to create automatic snapshots of EC2 / EBS volumes using AWS EC2 Lifecycle manager, Cloudwatch events triggering API calls or AWS backups, etc. To create automatic snapshots using AWS EC2 Lifecycle manager use following steps:

1. Login into AWS console
2. Go to EC2 -> Lifecycle manager
3. Create a backup policy with desired schedule for a particuar tag:value pair (Eg Backup_frequency:24_hours)
4. Add the selected tag to Volumes of VMs for which automatic snapshot is required.

Note that this way we only get snapshots. To create a VM we ideally need AMI. So not sure how we would restore the VM completely using these automated snapshots of volumes without associated AMI. We can always restore data by creating volumes from this snapshots and attaching those volumes to running VMs.

Refer:

• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/snapshot-lifecycle.html
• https://dzone.com/articles/guide-how-to-automate-aws-snapshots-with-cloudwatc
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/events/TakeScheduledSnapshot.html

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