i m running ec2 instance in 1 region i want to create snapshots of ec2 instances in other region directly without coping and cross region replication in s3, is this possible? if possible then how?
Amazon EBS Snapshots are created in the same region as the original EBS Volume. They can then be used to create a new Volume within the same Region.
If you wish to use an Amazon EBS Snapshot in a different region, the snapshot must first be copied to the other Region. This can done via the Amazon EC2 management console, the AWS Command-Line Interface (CLI) aws ec2 copy-snapshot command, or an AWS API call.
Please note that snapshots are incremental backups. The first snapshot isn't really a full backup. Rather, every snapshot simply copies any blocks that have been modified since any previous snapshot. Blocks are retained while snapshots still require the blocks. This means that blocks made during the initial snapshot could actually be deleted if they are not required by any active snapshots. This is why I say they are not the same as a full backup, which traditionally never has content deleted.
However, when a snapshot is copied to a new region it is copied in full, rather than incrementally.
If you do not with to copy an EBS snapshot between regions, you would need to find a different way to transfer the disk volume (eg filesystem-level synchronisation).
In fact, there should typically be no need to transfer a disk volume -- rather, your systems should be capable of configuring a new server based upon a startup configuration script and data should be stored in a separate database so that it is accessible to multiple instances. It is a very rare case that requires a complete copy of a disk volume.
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I am trying to create a AMI from an instance with a root device of 160GB in size. This root volume is of type io1 with an iops of 1250.
In my AWs account, creating an AMI takes about 5 minutes. This is with data about more than 100GB.
On the customer's AWS account, the same configuration takes over 20+ minutes.
I have tested this with many repetitions and I get almost similar results all time.
Any idea why the AMI creation varies so much between multiple AWS accounts?
An AMI consists of snapshots of Amazon EBS volumes attached to the instance.
Snapshots consist of "differences" from the previous snapshot (including the original AMI that was used to launch the instance).
For example, if you were to launch a new instance from an AMI and then immediately create a new AMI from the instance, very little data would have changed on the disk volume. Thus, the AMI and its underlying snapshot would be very quick to create.
If, over time, a lot of information was added/modified on the disk volume(s), then creating an AMI will take longer because more disk blocks have changed.
Creating Snapshots and AMIs can be made faster by taking more frequent snapshots, since this will copy modified blocks to Amazon S3. Thus, each successive snapshot/AMI will require fewer blocks to be copied.
The speed of a snapshot/AMI is not impacted by the assigned IOPS to a volume. The snapshot process takes place in the back-end, which does not consume the IOPS allocated to a volume.
Currently I am taking manual backup of our EC2 instance by zipping the data and downloading it locally as well as on DropBox.
But I am wondering, can I have an option where I just take a complete copy of the whole system automatically daily so if something goes wrong/crashes, I can replace it with previous copy immediately rather than spending hours installing and configuring things ?
I can see there is an option of take "Image" but can I automated them to have just 1 latest image and replace the system with single click ?
You can create a single Image of your instance as Backup of your instance Configuration.
And
To keep back up of your data you can use snapshots of your volumes.
snapshots store data in incremental format whenever you make any changes.
When ever needed you can just attach the volume from the snapshot to your Instance.
It is not a good idea to do "external backup" for EC2 instance snapshot, before you read AWS pricing details.
First, AWS is charging every GB of data your transfer OUTside AWS cloud. Check out this pricing. Generally speaking, after the 1st GB, the rest will be charge at least $0.09/GB, against S3-standard pricing ~ $0.023/GB.
Second, the snapshot created is actually charges as S3 pricing(Check :
Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot), not EBS pricing. After offset the transfer cost, perhaps you should consider create multiple snapshot than keep doing the data transfer out backup.
HOWEVER, if you happens to use an instance that use ephemeral storage, snapshot will not help. You need to copy the data out from ephemeral storage yourself. Then it is your choice to store under S3 or other place.
Third. If you worry the AWS region going down, check the multiple AZ option. Or checkout alternate AWS region option.
Fourth. When storing backup data in S3, you can always store them under Infrequent-Access, which save you some bucks, and you don't need to face an insane Glacier bills during emergency restore(Avoid Glacier, unless you are pretty sure about your own requirement).
Fifth, after done your plan of doing everything inside AWS, you can write bash script (AWS CLI) or use boto3, etc API to do the automatic backup.
Lastly , here is way of AWS create and maintain snapshot. Though each snapshot are deem "incremental", when u delete old snap shot :
the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain
only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.
You can always "test" restore by create another EC2 instance that load the backup snapshot. Or you can mount the snapshot volume from another EC2 instance to check the contents.
We a script to create couple of AMI, On successful completion of AMI it deletes the old AMI. As of my understanding AWS only charges for the space we use in S3 for storing snapshot that was created by an AMI.
If I created two AMIs for an instance on different dates(those two AMIs create two different snapshots). will they charge for only new snapshot size? or for the two snapshots?
How AWS charges for this process?
An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is actually a standard EBS snapshot, with additional metadata.
EBS snapshots are incremental in nature, meaning that only blocks that have been added or changed are copied to Amazon S3.
This means that successive snapshots could incur very little additional cost. Imagine this scenario:
AMI 1 is created from an instance (or, more accurately, from the EBS volumes associated with the instance)
Some data is changed on the EBS volumes
AMI 2 is created from the instance
Since each AMI is a snapshot, and snapshots only copy incremental data to S3, then the additional cost for AMI 2 would only be the new/modified blocks.
If AMI 1 were then deleted, the cost drop would be minimal, since most blocks contained in the AMI 1 snapshot would be kept for the AMI 2 snapshot.
One interesting result of all this (which is merely my suspicion, since I could not find any official statement to this effect) is that, if your AMI is based off an existing volume (eg an AMI from Amazon), then any snapshots/AMIs created of that volume will actually inherit blocks that are part of the original snapshot. Therefore, you (probably) do not pay the full cost of storing that AMI since the snapshot points to blocks already in a snapshot originally created by Amazon. (Don't worry if you didn't understand all that!)
AMIs are stand alone in nature and treated individually no matter whether created out of the same instance on the same day. So they charges of the AMI storage would be calculated 2 times.
For the record the AMI creation involves the snapshotting behind the scenes and AWS performs those snapshots calculating the delta; so the AMI creation process would faster the second time but still they are treated a 2 individual copies.
Why and when exactly should I use EC2 with S3?
I'm using EC2 to install tools like Gitlab and Rundeck. It works fine without S3 storage.
The problem is just if I terminate instances, I'll lose my files?
Short answer: Yes, you can use EC2 without S3. S3 is cloud storage and isn't used for EC2 images.
S3 is used for storing files, such as distributions, backups, and can even be used for static websites.
To answer the second part of your question: when creating storage for a new EC2 instance, uncheck the Delete on Termination, so it will be saved if you ever choose to terminate the EC2 instance.
Be careful though, I've had problems in the past where AWS will not let you reuse volumes that were used with a marketplace image.
EC2 uses EBS, not S3, for storing the volumes. (In fact, I don't exactly know how to make it use anything besides EBS. S3 is used for AMIs, which are basically templates that are copied to EBS when creating an instance.)
Option 1: Don't terminate your instances. Note that terminate means delete, not stop. You can stop them without terminating them.
Option 2: Configure your EBS volumes to not be deleted on termination. The volume will be detached rather than deleted. You can then attach it to another machine later.
You can also attach multiple EBS volumes to an instance, so if you want to save your data only but discard the OS, simply place your data on a secondary volume. The primary volume can be deleted and the secondary volume can be preserved. Delete-on-termination can be configured per-volume.
I am trying to create a backup mechanism for our server, so that if my system crashes, I should be able to create the whole system by running a single script
After going through Amazon documentation, this is my understanding of creating a backup and restoring
Backup
Create a AMI Image (this can be updated monthly)
Create a snapshot (This can be done using a daily script creating a snapshot)
Restore (A script to)
Create an EBS instance using AMI
Attach the EBS volume to Instance created
Now my Questions are
Is it the best way to take a backup and restore?
Do we actually need to backup 2 things, AMI and EBS volume (using snapshot), Can we just keep snapshots?
I understand this cannot work for a local instance store instance, as there is no snapshot functionality. So how can I create a backup and restore process for local instance store instances?
As I could not find any better alternative, I am sticking with the initial approach.
For EBS
Backup:
Create a AMI Image (this can be updated monthly).
Create a snapshot (This can be done using a daily script creating a snapshot).
Restore (A script to)
Create an EBS instance using AMI.
Attach the EBS volume to Instance created.
For instance store, I am only keeping the application (no database), so no need to keep a backup of that.
EBS Snapshots are an excellent way to create backups.
You can perform frequent Snapshots of your EBS Volumes via scripts. Weekly, Daily, Hourly, or as frequently as your Credit Card will allow. The only limit is around how many simultaneous snapshots you can be doing - when you hit that, the EBS API will start giving back errors until a few of the in-flight operations complete.
Snapshots can also be copied from Region to Region in order to provide backup against a catastrophic event.
When you snapshot an EBS volume, that snapshot is of the entire volume. Even if it was created from an AMI, your snapshot contains everything you need to create a new instance of the volume. You can pretty easily try this yourself.
If your instances are Linux based, there is no need to create an AMI if you're taking snapshots. You can create the AMI on the fly, from the snapshots, when you need to recover. If you got that process automated, it's pretty easy to do.
In Windows there is a limitation not allowing to launch an EC2 instance from a snapshot, so AMIs must be used. There are ways to workaround that limitation: You can check out the this post I wrote in our company's blog:
http://www.n2ws.com/blog/3-ways-ec2-windows-backup-and-recovery.html
I would suggest to use Auto Scaling in addition to EBS snapshots. If Instance is dying because of Hardware failure or it's scheduled for retirement by Amazon, Auto Scaling will start new Instance automatically.
But in this case, you have to setup NAS for your dynamic data. Depending on Server Load, the number of running Instances will be different and all your scaling servers must mount NAS storage which is shared across them.
Your Database should be on separate server or servers as well. Or you might want to use Amazon RDS as it has great auto-backup / Point-In-Time-Restore features, but you have to pay extra for that.
1) Yes.Snapshot is best way to backup and restore EBS volumes.
2) Depends, if you have the root volume as EBS backed AMI, then you can snapshot them as well and improves the manageability
3) Rsync and AMI is the option available for instance store