The AWS Snapshot makes the full copy of data when it is created, and after that, changes are incremental, storing only the changes made since the last snapshot. Snapshots also aid in backing up or transferring data into other regions.
In this article you will learn, how to use AWS Snapshot, the prerequisite is that you must have an EC2 Instance running to follow this post.
Create AWS Snapshot
In the Amazon Management Console, search EC2 in the search bar and open it, and click on Snapshots:
Click the Create snapshot button:
Create snapshot wizard will open with two options, from which you can create a snapshot of a specific Volume or Multiple Volumes of an EC2 instance:
Create a Snapshot of a Volume
To create a snapshot of a specific Volume of an EC2 instance, select the Volume option and select its Volume ID and also provide a Description:
Give it a tag and click on the Create snapshot button:
When the snapshot has been created successfully, its status will appear as Complete in the Snapshot dashboard:
Create a Snapshot of an Instance
To create a snapshot of an Instance (Multi-volume), in the Create snapshot wizard, select the option Instance and its Instance ID, also provide a Description for the Snapshot:
AWS also provides the facility of excluding any volume from the snapshot, but let’s leave it to default for this post:
Add tags and Click on the Create snapshot button:
After the successful creation of the snapshot, it will appear in the Snapshot dashboard with the status as Completed:
Give snapshots desired name by clicking on the Name column and editing them:
Recover an Instance From the Snapshot
If any Instance corrupts, you can recover it using its Snapshot. Firstly, stop the Instance and search Volume, go to the features tab, and select the Volumes EC2 feature:
Now select the Volume of the corrupted instance and open the Actions drop-down list, click on Detach volume:
Click on the Detach button:
The next step is to create a volume from the Snapshot for the recovery of the instance volume that is just detached. Search Snapshots, and select the Snapshot feature of the EC2 instance:
Select the Snapshot for recovery, open the Actions drop-down list, and select the option Create volume from snapshot:
Create volume wizard will open, select the Volume type and Availability zone, also provide the size for volume:
Write the tag for the Volume and click on Create volume button:
A success message will appear on the screen after the creation of the volume:
Open up the volume details by clicking on the volume name with the hyperlink to open its details.
Open the Actions drop-down list and select the option Attach volume:
Select the Instance that you want to recover, also provide its device name and click on Attach volume button:
A success message will appear when the Volume will attach to the Instance Successfully:
The instance is recovered using its snapshot, which means that It is ready for use again.
Conclusion
AWS has a feature of Snapshot to back up data and transfer it even to any other region. To create the Snapshot of a Specific volume of multiple-Volumes of an instance, simply go to snapshot and select the “Create Snapshot” option. Fill in the required data and create the Snapshot. To recover an Instance in case of data loss, create a Volume using the snapshot and attach it to the instance.
