Amazon EC2 - Create Snapshot
<AMAWSEC2 ACTIVITY="create_snapshot" VOLUMEID="text" SNAPSHOTDESC="text" RESULTDATASET="text" ACCESSKEY="text" SECRETKEY="text (encrypted)" PROXYHOST="text" USERAGENT="text" PROXYPORT="number" PROXYUSER="text" PROXYPWD="text (encrypted)" MAXERRORRETRY="number" SIGNMETHOD="text" SIGNVERSION="number" />
Description: Creates a snapshot of an Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume and stores it in S3. Snapshots are differential backups which means that only the blocks on the device that have changed since your last snapshot will be incrementally saved. For instance, if you have a device with 100 GB of data, but only 5 GB of data has changed since your last snapshot, only the 5 additional GB of snapshot data will be stored back to Amazon S3.
Practical Usage
After writing data to an Amazon EBS volume, you can periodically create a snapshot of the volume to use as a baseline for new volumes or for data backup. 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, it is recommended that you un-mount 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.
Connection Parameters
|
Property |
Type |
Required |
Default |
Markup |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Connection |
|
|
|
|
Indicates where user credentials and preferences should originate from. This is a design mode parameter used only during task construction and configuration, thus, comprises no markup. The available options are:
|
|
Session |
Text |
Yes if connection is session-based |
EC2Session1 |
SESSION="EC2Session1" |
The name of an existing session to attach this activity to. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Session. |
|
Access key |
Text |
Yes if connection is host-based |
(Empty) |
ACCESSKEY= "022QF06E7MXBSH9DHM02" |
A 20-character alphanumeric string that uniquely identifies the owner of the AWS service account, similar to a username. This key along with a corresponding secret access key forms a secure information set that AWS uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host. |
|
Secret Access key |
Text |
Yes if connection is host-based |
(Empty) |
SECRETKEY= "kWcrlUX5JEDGM/LtmEENI/ aVmYvHNif5zB+d9+ct" |
A 40-character string that serves the role as password to access the AWS service account. This along with an associated access key forms a secure information set that EC2 uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host. |
|
User agent |
Text |
No |
AutoMate |
USERAGENT="AutoMate" |
The name of the client or application initiating requests to AWS. The default value is 'AutoMate'. |
|
Service URL |
Text |
No |
(Empty) |
SERVICEURL= "https://ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com" |
The URL that provides the service endpoint. To make the service call to a different region, you can pass the region-specific endpoint URL. For example, entering https://ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com points to US West (Northern California) region. A complete list of EC2 regions, accompanying endpoints and valid protocols can be found below under EC2 Regions and Endpoints. |
|
Maximum retry on error |
Number |
No |
(Empty) |
MAXERRORRETRY="4" |
The total amount of instances this activity should retry the request before returning an error. Network components can generate errors anytime in the life of a request, thus, implementing retries can increase reliability. |
|
Proxy host |
Text |
No |
(Empty) |
|
The host name (e.g., server.domain.com) or IP address (e.g., xxx.xxx.xxx.xx) of the proxy server to use when connecting to AWS. |
|
Proxy port |
Number |
No |
(Empty) |
PROXYPORT="1028" |
The port that should be used to connect to the proxy server. |
|
Signature method |
Text |
No |
(Empty) |
SIGNMETHOD="HmacSHA256" |
The signature method to use for signing the request. This provides a valid hashing algorithm for signature calculation. Valid AWS signature methods are HmacSHA1 and HmacSHA256. |
|
Signature version |
Number |
No |
(Empty) |
SIGNVERSION="2" |
The signature version for signing the request. Valid AWS signature versions are 2 and 4. The difference with version 4 is that it allows you to sign your message using a key that is derived from your secret access key rather than using the secret access key itself. |
Snapshot Parameters
|
Property |
Type |
Required |
Default |
Markup |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Volume ID |
Text |
Yes |
(Empty) |
VOLUMEID="vol-4d826724" |
The unique ID of the Amazon EBS volume of which to take a snapshot. |
|
Description |
Text |
No |
(Empty) |
SNAPSHOTDESC="Backup" |
An optional description (up to 255 characters) of the Amazon EBS snapshot. |
|
Create and populate dataset with snapshot information |
Text |
No |
(Empty) |
RESULTDATASET="myDataset" |
The name of a dataset to create and populate with information regarding the EC2 snapshot being created. More details regarding the fields that this dataset creates can be found below under Datasets below. |
Description tab - A custom description can be provided on the Description tab to convey additional information or share special notes about a task step.
Error Causes tab - Specify how this step should behave upon the occurrence of an error. (Refer to Task Builder > Error Causes Tab for details.)
On Error tab - Specify what AWE should do if this step encounters an error as defined on the Error Causes tab. (Refer to Task Builder > On Error Tab for details.)
EC2 Regions and Endpoints
This table contains a complete list of EC2 endpoints, accompanying regions and supported protocols.
|
Endpoint |
Region |
Protocol |
|---|---|---|
|
ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com |
US East (Northern Virginia) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com |
US West (Oregon) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com |
US West (Northern California) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com |
EU (Ireland) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com |
Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com |
Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com |
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
|
ec2.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com |
South America (Sao Paulo) Region |
HTTP and HTTPS |
Datasets
A dataset is a multiple column, multiple row container object. This activity creates and populates a dataset containing a specific set of fields in addition to the standard dataset fields. The table below describes these fields (assuming the dataset name assigned was theDataset).
|
Name |
Type |
Return Value |
|---|---|---|
|
theDataset.Description |
Text |
Returns the description of the snapshot, if applicable. |
|
theDataset.OwnerID |
Text |
Returns the ID of the owner. This is the AWS Access Key ID of the user who owns the snapshot. |
|
theDataset.Progress |
Date |
The progress of the snapshot, in percentage. |
|
theDataset.SnapshotId |
Number |
Returns the ID of the snapshot. |
|
theDataset.StartTime |
Text |
Returns the time stamp when the snapshot was initiated. |
|
theDataset.Status |
Text |
Returns the snapshot state (e.g., pending, completed, error). |
|
theDataset.VolumeId |
Text |
Returns the ID of the volume from which the snapshot was created. |
|
theDataset.VolumeSize |
Number |
Returns the size of the volume from which the snapshot was created. |
Example
The sample AML code below can be copied and pasted directly into the Steps panel of the Task Builder.
Description: Create snapshot from amazon EBS volume "vol-e94feb80". Store EBS snapshot information into dataset "myDataset". Use default EC2 session.
<AMAWSEC2 ACTIVITY="create_snapshot" VOLUMEID="vol-e94feb80" RESULTDATASET="myDataset" />