AWS EC2 - Automatic AMI - amazon-web-services

Question

I have a AWS EC2 instance That i need to manually access to the AWS console and make a daily image of the machine(AMI)
How i can make a daily AMI backup of the machine and delete old version (old then 7 days)?
Thank you!

Answer 1

Anything that you can do through the web console you can also do through the CLI.
In this particular case, I suspect a combination of aws ec2 create-image, aws ec2 describe-images, and aws ec2 deregister-image would let you do what you want.

Answer 2

AWS lambda would be a right solution to automate the backup of your ami and clean up. You can schedule the lambda function (basically a python code) to run periodically. This way you don't need to have your ec2 running all the time. An example here http://powerupcloud.azurewebsites.net/2016/10/15/serverless-automate-ami-creation-and-deletion-using-aws-lambda/

Answer 3

Below is a shell script I use that runs daily via cron. You can set the value of a variable prevday1 to set how long you want to keep your images. In your case you want 7 days to it would be
prevday1=$(date --date="7 days ago" +%Y-%m-%d)
Here is the full script:
#!/bin/bash
# prior to using this script you will need to install the aws cli on the local machine
# https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/setup-aws-cli.html
# AWS CLI - will need to configure this
# sudo apt-get -y install awscli
# example of current config - july 10, 2020
#aws configure
#aws configure set key ARIAW5YUMJT7PO2N7L *fake - user your own*
#aws configure secret X2If+xa/rFITQVMrgdQVpFLx1c7fwP604QkH/x *fake - user your own*
#aws configure set region us-east-2
#aws configure set format json
# backup EC2 instances nightly 4:30 am GMT
# 30 4 * * * . $HOME/.profile; /var/www/devopstools/shell-scripts/file_backup_scripts/ec2_backup.sh
script_dir="$(dirname "$0")"
# If you want live notifications about backups
#SLACK_API_URL="https://hooks.slack.com/services/T6VQ93KM/BT8REK5/hFYEDUCoO1Bw72wxxFSj7oY"
source "$script_dir/includes/helpers.sh"
prevday1=$(date --date="2 days ago" +%Y-%m-%d)
prevday2=$(date --date="3 days ago" +%Y-%m-%d)
today=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
instances=()
# add as many instances to backup as needed
instances+=("autobackup_impressto|i-0ed78a1f3583e1859")
for ((i = 0; i < ${#instances[#]}; i++)); do
instance=${instances[$i]}
instanceName="$(cut -d'|' -f1 <<<"$instance")"
instanceId="$(cut -d'|' -f2 <<<"$instance")"
prevImageName1="${instanceName}_${prevday1}_$instanceId"
prevImageName2="${instanceName}_${prevday2}_$instanceId"
newImageName="${instanceName}_${today}_$instanceId"
consoleout --green "Begin backing $instanceName [$instanceId]"
aws ec2 create-image \
--instance-id $instanceId \
--name "$newImageName" \
--description "$instanceName" \
--no-reboot
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "$newImageName created."
echo ""
if [ ! -z "${SLACK_API_URL}" ]; then
curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: application/json' --data '{"text":":rotating_light: Backing up *'$newImageName'* to AMI. :rotating_light:"}' ${SLACK_API_URL} fi
echo -e "\e[92mBacking up ${newImageName} to AMI."
else
echo "$newImageName not created."
echo ""
fi
imageId=$(aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=${prevImageName1}" --query 'Images[*].[ImageId]' --output text)
if [ ! -z "${imageId}" ]; then
echo "Deregistering ${prevImageName1} [${imageId}]"
echo ""
echo "aws ec2 deregister-image --image-id ${imageId}"
aws ec2 deregister-image --image-id ${imageId}
fi
imageId=$(aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=name,Values=${prevImageName2}" --query 'Images[*].[ImageId]' --output text)
if [ ! -z "${imageId}" ]; then
echo "Deregistering ${prevImageName2} [${imageId}]"
echo ""
echo "aws ec2 deregister-image --image-id ${imageId}"
aws ec2 deregister-image --image-id ${imagesId}
fi
consoleout --green "Completed backing $instanceName"
done
Also available here - https://impressto.net/automatic-aws-ec2-backups/

Answer 4

You can use https://github.com/alestic/ec2-consistent-snapshot and run it in a cron job. It supports various filesystems and has support for ensuring database snapshots are consistent. If you don't have a database in your instance, it will still ensure consistent snapshots by freezing the filesystem.