Amazon EBS adds ability to take point-in-time, crash-consistent snapshot across multiple EBS volumes

You can now take crash-consistent snapshots of multiple Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes attached to an EC2 instance with a single API call. You can also use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) to automate the multi-volume snapshot management via creating lifecycle policies.

Currently, EBS enables you to back up your volume at any time using snapshots. Snapshots retain the data from all completed I/O operations, allowing you to restore the volume to its exact state at the moment before backup (referred to as crash-consistency). With this launch, you can now take crash-consistent snapshots across multiple EBS volumes in an EC2 instance with a single API call. Backup data across multiple volumes is in sync and the restore of EBS volumes is accurate. Since snapshots are automatically taken across multiple EBS volumes, you no longer need to stop your instance or coordinate between volumes to ensure crash-consistency. To get started, call the new API using the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) tool or AWS SDK. You can also use the AWS console to create Multi-volume crash-consistent snapshots.

This feature is now available in US East (N. Virginia), EU (Ireland), US West (N. California), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), US West (Oregon), South America (Sao Paulo), Asia Pacific (Sydney), EU (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), US East (Ohio), Canada (Central), EU (London), EU (Paris), Asia Pacific (Osaka), and EU (Stockholm) at no additional cost.

To learn more about the new feature, visit the blog post.

Please refer to Amazon EBS Documentation for more details on EBS snapshots.