create-snapshot¶

Description¶

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

When a snapshot is created, any AWS Marketplace product codes that are associated with the source volume are propagated to the snapshot.

You can take a snapshot of an attached volume that is in use. However, snapshots only capture data that has been written to your EBS volume at the time the snapshot command is issued; this may exclude any data that has been cached by any applications or the operating system. If you can pause any file systems on the volume long enough to take a snapshot, your snapshot should be complete. However, if you cannot pause all file writes to the volume, you should unmount the volume from within the instance, issue the snapshot command, and then remount the volume to ensure a consistent and complete snapshot. You may remount and use your volume while the snapshot status is pending .

To create a snapshot for EBS volumes that serve as root devices, you should stop the instance before taking the snapshot.

Snapshots that are taken from encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted. Volumes that are created from encrypted snapshots are also automatically encrypted. Your encrypted volumes and any associated snapshots always remain protected.

You can tag your snapshots during creation. For more information, see Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide .

For more information, see Amazon Elastic Block Store and Amazon EBS Encryption in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide .

Synopsis¶

  create-snapshot
[--description <value>]
--volume-id <value>
[--tag-specifications <value>]
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]
[--cli-auto-prompt <value>]

Options¶

--description (string)

A description for the snapshot.

--volume-id (string)

The ID of the EBS volume.

--tag-specifications (list)

The tags to apply to the snapshot during creation.

(structure)

The tags to apply to a resource when the resource is being created.

ResourceType -> (string)

The type of resource to tag. Currently, the resource types that support tagging on creation are: capacity-reservation | client-vpn-endpoint | dedicated-host | dhcp-options | export-image-task | export-instance-task | fleet | fpga-image | host-reservation | import-image-task | import-snapshot-task | instance | internet-gateway | ipv4pool-ec2 | ipv6pool-ec2 | key-pair | launch-template | placement-group | prefix-list | natgateway | network-acl | security-group | spot-fleet-request | spot-instances-request | snapshot | subnet | traffic-mirror-filter | traffic-mirror-session | traffic-mirror-target | transit-gateway | transit-gateway-attachment | transit-gateway-route-table | volume |vpc | vpc-endpoint (for interface and gateway endpoints) | vpc-endpoint-service (for AWS PrivateLink) | vpc-flow-log .

To tag a resource after it has been created, see CreateTags .

Tags -> (list)

The tags to apply to the resource.

(structure)

Describes a tag.

Key -> (string)

The key of the tag.

Constraints: Tag keys are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 127 Unicode characters. May not begin with aws: .

Value -> (string)

The value of the tag.

Constraints: Tag values are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 255 Unicode characters.

Shorthand Syntax:

ResourceType=string,Tags=[{Key=string,Value=string},{Key=string,Value=string}] ...

JSON Syntax:

[
  {
    "ResourceType": "client-vpn-endpoint"|"customer-gateway"|"dedicated-host"|"dhcp-options"|"elastic-ip"|"elastic-gpu"|"export-image-task"|"export-instance-task"|"fleet"|"fpga-image"|"host-reservation"|"image"|"import-image-task"|"import-snapshot-task"|"instance"|"internet-gateway"|"key-pair"|"launch-template"|"local-gateway-route-table-vpc-association"|"natgateway"|"network-acl"|"network-interface"|"placement-group"|"reserved-instances"|"route-table"|"security-group"|"snapshot"|"spot-fleet-request"|"spot-instances-request"|"subnet"|"traffic-mirror-filter"|"traffic-mirror-session"|"traffic-mirror-target"|"transit-gateway"|"transit-gateway-attachment"|"transit-gateway-multicast-domain"|"transit-gateway-route-table"|"volume"|"vpc"|"vpc-peering-connection"|"vpn-connection"|"vpn-gateway"|"vpc-flow-log",
    "Tags": [
      {
        "Key": "string",
        "Value": "string"
      }
      ...
    ]
  }
  ...
]

--dry-run | --no-dry-run (boolean)

Checks whether you have the required permissions for the action, without actually making the request, and provides an error response. If you have the required permissions, the error response is DryRunOperation . Otherwise, it is UnauthorizedOperation .

--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml (string) Reads arguments from the JSON string provided. The JSON string follows the format provided by --generate-cli-skeleton. If other arguments are provided on the command line, those values will override the JSON-provided values. It is not possible to pass arbitrary binary values using a JSON-provided value as the string will be taken literally. This may not be specified along with --cli-input-yaml.

--generate-cli-skeleton (string) Prints a JSON skeleton to standard output without sending an API request. If provided with no value or the value input, prints a sample input JSON that can be used as an argument for --cli-input-json. Similarly, if provided yaml-input it will print a sample input YAML that can be used with --cli-input-yaml. If provided with the value output, it validates the command inputs and returns a sample output JSON for that command.

--cli-auto-prompt (boolean) Automatically prompt for CLI input parameters.

See ‘aws help’ for descriptions of global parameters.

Examples¶

To create a snapshot

This example command creates a snapshot of the volume with a volume ID of vol-1234567890abcdef0 and a short description to identify the snapshot.

Command:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description "This is my root volume snapshot"

Output:

{
    "Description": "This is my root volume snapshot",
    "Tags": [],
    "Encrypted": false,
    "VolumeId": "vol-1234567890abcdef0",
    "State": "pending",
    "VolumeSize": 8,
    "StartTime": "2018-02-28T21:06:01.000Z",
    "Progress": "",
    "OwnerId": "012345678910",
    "SnapshotId": "snap-066877671789bd71b"
}

To create a snapshot with tags

This example command creates a snapshot and applies two tags: purpose=prod and costcenter=123.

Command:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description 'Prod backup' --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=snapshot,Tags=[{Key=purpose,Value=prod},{Key=costcenter,Value=123}]'

Output:

{
    "Description": "Prod backup",
    "Tags": [
        {
            "Value": "prod",
            "Key": "purpose"
        },
        {
            "Value": "123",
            "Key": "costcenter"
        }
     ],
     "Encrypted": false,
     "VolumeId": "vol-1234567890abcdef0",
     "State": "pending",
     "VolumeSize": 8,
     "StartTime": "2018-02-28T21:06:06.000Z",
     "Progress": "",
     "OwnerId": "012345678910",
     "SnapshotId": "snap-09ed24a70bc19bbe4"
 }

Output¶

DataEncryptionKeyId -> (string)

The data encryption key identifier for the snapshot. This value is a unique identifier that corresponds to the data encryption key that was used to encrypt the original volume or snapshot copy. Because data encryption keys are inherited by volumes created from snapshots, and vice versa, if snapshots share the same data encryption key identifier, then they belong to the same volume/snapshot lineage. This parameter is only returned by DescribeSnapshots .

Description -> (string)

The description for the snapshot.

Encrypted -> (boolean)

Indicates whether the snapshot is encrypted.

KmsKeyId -> (string)

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) customer master key (CMK) that was used to protect the volume encryption key for the parent volume.

OwnerId -> (string)

The AWS account ID of the EBS snapshot owner.

Progress -> (string)

The progress of the snapshot, as a percentage.

SnapshotId -> (string)

The ID of the snapshot. Each snapshot receives a unique identifier when it is created.

StartTime -> (timestamp)

The time stamp when the snapshot was initiated.

State -> (string)

The snapshot state.

StateMessage -> (string)

Encrypted Amazon EBS snapshots are copied asynchronously. If a snapshot copy operation fails (for example, if the proper AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) permissions are not obtained) this field displays error state details to help you diagnose why the error occurred. This parameter is only returned by DescribeSnapshots .

VolumeId -> (string)

The ID of the volume that was used to create the snapshot. Snapshots created by the CopySnapshot action have an arbitrary volume ID that should not be used for any purpose.

VolumeSize -> (integer)

The size of the volume, in GiB.

OwnerAlias -> (string)

The AWS owner alias, as maintained by Amazon. The possible values are: amazon | self | all | aws-marketplace | microsoft . This AWS owner alias is not to be confused with the user-configured AWS account alias, which is set from the IAM console.

Tags -> (list)

Any tags assigned to the snapshot.

(structure)

Describes a tag.

Key -> (string)

The key of the tag.

Constraints: Tag keys are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 127 Unicode characters. May not begin with aws: .

Value -> (string)

The value of the tag.

Constraints: Tag values are case-sensitive and accept a maximum of 255 Unicode characters.

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