ec2-create-snapshot

From Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: 2008-12-01

previous page next page

ec2-create-snapshot

Syntax

ec2-create-snapshot volume_id

Description

Creates a snapshot of the current state of an Amazon EBS volume and stores it in Amazon S3. You can use snapshots for backups, to make identical copies of instance devices, and to save data before shutting down an instance.

When taking a snapshot of a file system, we recommend unmounting it first. This ensures the file system metadata is in a consistent state, that the 'mounted indicator' is cleared, and that all applications using that file system are stopped and in a consistent state. Some file systems, such as xfs, can freeze and unfreeze activity so a snapshot can be made without unmounting.

Options

Option Description Required

Option	Description	Required
`volume_id`	The ID of the volume to snapshot. Example: `vol-4d826724`	Yes

volume_id

The ID of the volume to snapshot.

Example: vol-4d826724

Yes

Output

Amazon EBS returns a table that contains the following information:

SNAPSHOT identifier
ID of the snapshot
ID of the volume
Snapshot state (e.g., pending, completed)
Time stamp when the snapshot was initiated

Amazon EBS displays errors on stderr.

Example

This example creates a snapshot of volume vol-4d826724.

PROMPT> ec2-create-snapshot vol-4d826724
SNAPSHOT snap-78a54011 vol-4d826724 pending 2008-02-15T09:03:58+0000

ec2-create-snapshot