Amazon EBS Snapshot is an easy to use feature that backs up your data on an Amazon EBS volume. This session covers filesystem selection (XFS, ext*, etc.), quiescing of the filesystem, tagging of snapshots, and life-cycle management of snapshots. In this session, we introduce two new OSS tools. One tool manages arrays of snapshots using tagging, making it easier to snapshot and recover a RAID array of Amazon EBS volumes; another tool manages snapshots of root volumes across an AWS account, and automatically snapshotting and applying lifecycle management to root volume snapshots.

1. Advanced EBS Snapshot Management
Craig Carl, AWS
Session STG402
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2. EBS
• Network-attached block devices for Amazon EC2
instances
• Protected, durable within an AZ
– AFR between 0.1% – 0.5%
• Standard and PIOPS
– PIOPS is for databases!

3. Snapshots
• More durable than an Amazon EBS volume
– Stored in Amazon S3
• Differential (space-efficient)
– First snapshot is a clone
– Pay for only what you use
• AZ-independent
– Clone into any AZ
• Can be copied efficiently across regions

4. Why Take Snapshots
• More durable than Amazon EBS
• Versioning
• Backups
• Cost

5. Individual snapshots are easy
create-snapshot
delete-snapshot
copy-snapshot

6. Managing Thousands of Snapshots Isn’t Easy
• A snapshot should have a lifecycle
–
–
–
–
Grandfather-father-son
x versions
x dailies, y weeklies, z monthlies
A lifecycle might span regions
• Snapshots of arrays

7. Introducing arche
• arche
– https://github.com/AWSLabs/arche
• OSS, built and maintained by AWS
– Accepting pull requests from the community

8. arche
• Two primary pieces
– arche takes snapshots and manages lifecycles
• Takes snapshots based on a SWF schedule
– Tags snapshots
• Deletes snapshots based on a policy
– Limited to number of days now
– pierus is a CLI for restoring snapshots.

9. arche Uses Tags
• on volumes
KEY
VALUE
arche
1
retention
<int> (days)
array
<str>
dest-region
<str>

10. arche Uses a Lot of Tags
• on snapshots
KEY
VALUE
arche
1
src_instance
<str>
src_device
<str>
expire_date
date
array
<str>
src-region
<str>

11. Accepting pull requests!
•
•
•
•
File system quiesce support
More advanced lifecycles
Multi region copy
AMI create support

12. Questions?
Craig Carl
crcarl@amazon.com
STG402

13. We are sincerely eager to hear
your feedback on this
presentation and on re:Invent.
Please fill out an evaluation form
when you have a chance.