Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is one of the most widely used storage services in AWS. While EBS volumes are highly reliable and scalable, they are still attached to EC2 instances — meaning if something goes wrong with your instance or volume, your data could be at risk.

That’s where EBS Snapshots come in!

EBS Snapshots provide a way to back up your volumes and ensure your data can be quickly restored whenever needed. In this article, we’ll explore what EBS Snapshots are, why they’re important, and go through hands-on practical steps to create and restore them.

🔹 What is an EBS Snapshot?

An EBS Snapshot is a point-in-time backup of your Amazon EBS volume. Snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 internally (managed by AWS), making them durable, incremental, and cost-efficient.

Key points about snapshots:

Point-in-Time Backup: Captures the state of your volume at the moment you take it.
Incremental: Only stores the changes since the last snapshot, saving storage costs.
Portable: Can be copied across AWS Regions and Accounts.
Restorable: You can create new EBS volumes from snapshots anytime.

🔹 Why Use EBS Snapshots?

Disaster Recovery: Quickly restore data if the primary EBS volume is lost or corrupted.
Migration: Move data between regions or accounts using snapshots.
Scaling: Create multiple volumes from a single snapshot for different EC2 instances.
Backup Automation: Integrate snapshots with AWS Backup or Lifecycle policies.

🛠 Hands-on: Creating an EBS Snapshot

Let’s go through the step-by-step process.

Step 1: Log in to AWS Console

Go to the EC2 Dashboard → Navigate to Volumes under Elastic Block Store.
Select the volume attached to your EC2 instance.

Step 2: Create a Snapshot

Select your EBS volume.
Click on Actions → Create Snapshot.
Provide details:
- Description: (e.g., “Backup of EC2 root volume - Aug 2025”)
- Optionally, add Tags like Name: Snapshot-Backup.
Click Create Snapshot.

✅ Your snapshot will start creating. You can monitor the progress under Snapshots in the left-hand panel.

Step 3: Verify Snapshot

Navigate to Snapshots under Elastic Block Store.
Ensure the status changes to ‘completed’.
Congratulations 🎉 — you have successfully created an EBS Snapshot!

🛠 Restoring an EBS Volume from Snapshot

Snapshots are most useful when you need to restore data.

Step 1: Go to Snapshots

Open the Snapshots section in the EC2 Dashboard.

Step 2: Create Volume from Snapshot

Select your snapshot.
Click Actions → Create Volume.
Provide details:
- Availability Zone (AZ) must match the EC2 instance you want to attach.
- Select desired Volume Type (e.g., gp3, io2, etc.).
Click Create Volume.

Step 3: Attach Volume to EC2 Instance

Go to Volumes in the EC2 dashboard.
Select the new volume created from the snapshot.
Click Actions → Attach Volume.
Choose the target EC2 instance and specify a device name (e.g., /dev/sdf).
Attach the volume.

Step 4: Mount the Volume (Linux Instance)

SSH into your EC2 instance.
Check available disks:
```
 lsblk
```
Create a mount point directory:
```
 sudo mkdir /mnt/snapshot-data
```

Mount the volume:

 sudo mount /dev/xvdf /mnt/snapshot-data

Verify data:
```
 ls /mnt/snapshot-data
```

✅ Your restored data is now accessible!

🔄 Automating EBS Snapshots

Manually creating snapshots is fine for testing, but in production you should automate.
Options include:

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM): Schedule snapshot creation and deletion.
AWS Backup: Centralized backup service across AWS services.
Lambda Functions + CloudWatch Events: Build custom automation logic.

📊 Diagram: EBS Snapshot Workflow

   EC2 Instance --> EBS Volume --> EBS Snapshot (S3 Storage)
                                     |
                                     v
                              Restore to New EBS Volume
                                     |
                                     v
                                Attach to EC2 Instance

🏁 Conclusion

Amazon EBS Snapshots are a powerful tool for backup, recovery, and migration in AWS. With just a few clicks (or commands), you can secure your data and ensure business continuity.

By practising the steps above, you’ll be able to:
✔ Create snapshots of EBS volumes.
✔ Restore them into new volumes.
✔ Attach and mount them to EC2 instances.
✔ Automate backups for production environments.

If you’re serious about AWS and Cloud, mastering EBS Snapshots is a must-have skill!

Deep Dive into Amazon EBS Snapshots in AWS