Welcome to our AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional tutorial series. In this tutorial,we will guide you through the process of taking automated snapshots using AWS Lifecycle Manager rules. AWS offers a robust toolset for managing your resources, and one such tool is Lifecycle Manager, which can help you automate the snapshot creation process for your EC2 instances. Let’s dive in!
Introduction
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Prerequisites
For this demonstration, we assume that you already have an EC2 instance up and running.
Creating Snapshots with Lifecycle Manager
- Accessing Lifecycle Manager: First, go to the EC2 Dashboard in your AWS Management Console. On the left sidebar, you’ll find “Lifecycle Manager” under “Elastic Block Store.” Click on it and open it in a new tab to ensure we don’t miss any steps.
- Choosing Target Resources: You’ll need to specify whether you intend to take snapshots for a volume or an instance. In our case, we’ll go with volumes, as it offers more flexibility.
- Adding Target Resource Tags: To identify the resources you want to snapshot, it’s essential to assign tags to your EC2 instances. In the video, we assigned a tag with the name “automated snapshot demo.” You can add multiple tags, and AWS allows up to 45 tags per resource.
- Providing a Description: You should provide a description for the snapshots you create. In this demonstration, “automated snapshots demo” was used as the description.
- Creating an IAM Role: An IAM (Identity and Access Management) role is necessary for Lifecycle Manager to perform actions on your behalf. If you don’t have an IAM role already, you can use the default role, which will be automatically created with the required permissions.
- Adding Optional Tags: You have the option to add additional tags to your snapshots for organization purposes.
- Setting Policy Status: Decide whether you want to enable or disable the policy. Enabling the policy allows automated snapshots to be taken based on your configured schedule.
- Creating a Snapshot Schedule: You can create multiple schedules based on your needs. Here’s what you need to configure:
- Schedule Name: Give your schedule a name (e.g., “Schedule 1”).
- Frequency: Choose how often you want to take snapshots, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or using a custom cron expression.
- Frequency Details: Specify how frequently you want to take snapshots within the chosen frequency (e.g., every 1 hour).
- Start Time: Set the time at which the snapshot schedule should begin.
- Retention Type: Decide whether you want to retain snapshots based on a count (number of days) or age (delete snapshots after a certain number of days).
In the video, a daily snapshot was set to be taken every hour for demonstration purposes. Additionally, a count-based retention policy was used, which keeps snapshots for a specified number of days.
Review and Create
After configuring your snapshot schedule, review all the settings to ensure they match your requirements. Once you’re satisfied, click on “Create Policy.”
Conclusion
And there you have it! You’ve successfully set up automated snapshots for your EC2 instances using AWS Lifecycle Manager. Your EC2 instances will now automatically take snapshots according to the schedule you defined.
Remember, AWS Snapshot Lifecycle Manager simplifies the snapshot management process, ensuring your data is consistently backed up and easily recoverable.