Backup your EC2 instances on AWS

Here’s a couple of proven techniques for backing up your EC2 instances in AWS.

1. EBS Snapshot – The easiest and most popular method
2. AMI Creation – Slightly more involved, but includes the OS (C:\ drive) as well.

Each of these can be done via the Management Console (Manual method) as well as automated using terraform and/or bash scripts

EBS Snapshot – Just the EBS volume backup (no C: drive)  Option 1 – Manual Snapshot  (Management Console)

This can be done from the AWS management console (Manual Backup). Find your EBS device from the instance details.

EBS Snapshot Automated – Automate the EBS Snapshotting – Single EBS Volume

 

#!/bin/bash

ec2-describe-volumes | awk '{ print $2 }' | sort -u >  /tmp/ebs_volumes

for i in $(cat /tmp/ebs_volumes); do
   echo $i;
   ec2-create-snapshot $i;
done

EBS Snapshot Automated – Backing up ALL EC2s in a VPC

#!/bin/bash
#Script to Automate AMI backup

echo "----------------------------------\n   `date`   \n----------------------------------"

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters Name=vpc-id,Values=vpc-xxx |   awk '{ print $8 }' | sort -n   | grep  "i-" > /tmp/instanceid.txt

echo "Starting the Daily AMI creation: "

 #To create AMI from instance-id 

for i in $(cat /tmp/instanceid.txt); do
        echo "Creating AMI for Instance id $i ......."


echo "instance-`date +%d%b%y`-$i" > /tmp/aminame.txt

aws ec2 create-image --instance-id $i --name "`cat /tmp/aminame.txt`" --description "This is created by ami-backup.sh" --no-reboot | grep -ir ami | awk '{print $4}' > /tmp/amiID.txt

echo  "AMI Name is: `cat /tmp/aminame.txt`\n"

done

echo done

Method 2 – AMI Creation – Backing up the entire EC2 – including the C: drive

Either bash or terraform code that will create AMI automatically at regular intervals.

Terraform

module "lambda_ami_backup" {
  source = "git::https://github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-ec2-ami-backup.git?ref=tags/0.3.2"

  name           = "${var.name}"
  stage          = "${var.stage}"
  namespace      = "${var.namespace}"
  region         = "${var.region}"
  ami_owner      = "${var.ami_owner}"
  instance_id    = "${var.instance_id}"
  retention_days = "14"
}

Summary

Backing up EC2 instances is a popular use case on AWS. There’s a couple of proven techniques – EBS snapshots being the most popular one.