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Advanced EBS Snapshot Management

Craig Carl, AWS

Session STG402

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!

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

Why Take Snapshots

• More durable than Amazon EBS

• Versioning

• Backups

• Cost

Individual snapshots are easy

create-snapshot

delete-snapshot

copy-snapshot

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

Introducing arche

• arche – https://github.com/AWSLabs/arche

• OSS, built and maintained by AWS

– Accepting pull requests from the community

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.

arche Uses Tags

KEY VALUE

arche 1

retention <int> (days)

array <str>

dest-region <str>

• on volumes

arche Uses a Lot of Tags

KEY VALUE

arche 1

src_instance <str>

src_device <str>

expire_date date

array <str>

src-region <str>

• on snapshots

Accepting pull requests!

• File system quiesce support

• More advanced lifecycles

• Multi region copy

• AMI create support

Questions?

Craig Carl

crcarl@amazon.com

STG402

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