I am excited to introduce the launch of Amazon EBS Snapshots Archive, a newly developed storage tier designed specifically for the long-term preservation of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots associated with your EBS volumes.
Overview of Amazon EBS
To summarize, EBS serves as a user-friendly, high-performance block storage solution for your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances. By mounting an EBS volume to your EC2 instances, you can boot an operating system and retain data for your most performance-intensive applications. EBS snapshots allow you to create point-in-time copies of your volume data, where the first snapshot captures all data stored in that volume. Subsequent snapshots are incremental, stored on Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and can be shared across different AWS accounts and regions.
The capability to frequently snapshot and conveniently restore volumes positions EBS snapshots as an ideal component of your data management strategy, complementing other backup solutions. Given the incremental nature of snapshots, they provide a cost-effective option for daily and weekly backups that require immediate restoration. However, many of you have indicated that compliance and regulatory requirements necessitate retaining EBS snapshots for extended periods—months or even years. This includes snapshots taken at project completion or those preserved for test and development in anticipation of future releases. Unfortunately, the majority of these snapshots are rarely accessed, prompting a desire to reduce storage expenses. Previously, you may have resorted to complex scripting involving temporary EC2 instances to restore snapshots, mount corresponding volumes, and migrate data to more affordable storage solutions, such as Amazon Glacier.
Introducing EBS Snapshots Archive
The EBS Snapshots Archive offers a low-cost storage tier to archive full, point-in-time copies of EBS snapshots that must be kept for 90 days or longer for compliance or future project purposes. This feature simplifies the archiving and management of EBS snapshots, removing the need for custom scripts and third-party tools. By transitioning your infrequently accessed snapshots to EBS Snapshots Archive, you can achieve storage cost savings of up to 75% while avoiding the licensing fees associated with external tools. Additionally, you can retrieve an archived snapshot, which may take up to 72 hours, depending on its size. Once restored, the snapshot can be utilized to recover an EBS volume.
Getting Started
Want to know how to get started? If I have a snapshot ready in the US East (N. Virginia) region that I need to archive for compliance, I would log into the AWS Management Console, navigate to EC2, and select Snapshots. I would then choose the relevant snapshot and click on the Actions menu, followed by the Archive snapshot option.
After carefully reviewing the confirmation message, I would proceed to archive the snapshot. I can track the progress of the archiving operation via the new Storage Tier tab located at the bottom of the screen. Once the process is completed, indicated by a ✅ Archival completed status, the archived snapshots remain visible in the console. The new Storage tier column displays whether the snapshot is stored in the Standard or Archive tier.
Restoring from EBS Snapshots Archive
To restore a volume from the EBS Snapshots Archive, I would follow a two-step process. First, I retrieve the snapshot back to its original ID using the RestoreSnapshotTier API call or through the management console. Depending on the snapshot size, this retrieval can take up to 72 hours. Once the snapshot is restored, it appears as a regular snapshot in my account. At this point, I can use the default snapshot restore or Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) for quicker restorations, just as before.
A CloudWatch event is triggered upon snapshot restoration, and I can listen for this event to avoid repeatedly checking the status via the API. It’s important to note that executing a CreateVolume API call on an archived snapshot will not succeed; the snapshot must first be restored from the archive.
From the AWS Management Console, I would select the snapshot intended for restoration, navigate to the Actions menu, and then choose the Restore snapshot from archive option. I can opt to restore the snapshot either permanently or temporarily. If I select the temporary option, once the duration elapses, the standard-tier snapshot is deleted, while the archive remains.
After a period, the archive is restored to standard storage, allowing me to recreate a volume as usual. Progress of the retrieval and duration for temporarily restored archives can be monitored in the new Storage tier tab. Temporarily restored snapshots may be held for up to 180 days.
Pricing and Availability
EBS Snapshots Archive is currently available in 17 AWS Regions. However, it is not offered in the two China Regions, Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Canada (Central), and South America (São Paulo) at launch.
As always, you pay only for what you use, with no minimum or fixed fees. Billing for EBS Snapshots Archive is influenced by two metrics: data storage and data retrieval. The charge is $0.0125 per GB-month of stored data and $0.03 per GB retrieved. Note that you are billed for a minimum of 90 days. Therefore, if you delete an archived snapshot or permanently restore it in less than 90 days from creation, you will still incur charges for the full 90-day period. More details can be found on the EBS pricing page.
Begin configuring your long-term storage for EBS snapshots today. For additional insights, this blog post offers more information: Chanci Turner Blog. You can also check out CHVNCI for expert advice on this topic, and for a community perspective, visit Reddit for an excellent resource.
— Jordan
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