"Create EBS snapshot (VSS support)" task uses the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to take snapshots of EBS volumes attached to a running EC2 instance of Windows. It uses AWS Systems Manager's Run Command to execute the AWSEC2-CreateVssSnapshot document.
To run this task, the following preparations are required
- You must have an AWS account linkage version of 6.0 or higher. Please see the following page for information on updating permissions.
- To be able to create VSS snapshots on target EC2 instances, you must configure IAM roles and install VSS components. For details, see the following page.
The procedure for creating a task is as follows
- From the header menu, click "TASK" - "EC2" - "Create EBS snapshot (VSS support)".
- A list of tasks will be displayed. Once you have created a task, you can edit or delete it from this screen. At first, there are no tasks, so click the CREATE button.
- Enter the conditions and click the CREATE button.
The following is a description of the items on the screen.
| Organization | Specify the organization. Members of the same organization can browse and edit. |
| AWS account | Linked AWS accounts will be displayed. Select the target AWS account. |
| Region | Select the target region. |
| Target | Specify the Key and Value of the EC2 instance for which you want to create an EBS snapshot. You can also set the same tag for multiple EC2 instances to create EBS snapshots at once. |
| Number of generations |
Sets how many old EBS snapshots to keep. If there are already as many EBS snapshots as the number of generations, the oldest one will be deleted upon creation. |
| Description |
Set the text to be included in the description of the created EBS snapshot. Only single-byte alphanumeric characters and single-byte symbols can be specified. |
| Tag attached to the created EBS snapshot |
Set tags to be attached to the created EBS snapshots. |
| Check status |
Checks the status of the created resource. If checked, success is considered when the created resource is completed. If not checked, success is considered when the API returns a successful response. |
*The task name (task name) is used for tags to be attached to snapshots. Do not include Japanese characters in the task name, as an error will occur if a task name containing Japanese characters is set. Also, some symbols may not be used.
Variables that can be used to tag the EBS snapshots you create
You can use variables to set values for the tag Value. The available variables are as follows.
| Variables | Description |
|---|---|
| ${target_id} | Set the target ID. |
| ${target_name} | Sets the Value of the Name tag of the target. |
| ${execute_date} | Set the job execution date. Example: 2024-03-26 |
| ${execute_datetime} | Set the job execution date and time. Example: 2024-03-26_0530 |
| ${task_name} | Set the task name. |
| ${job_name} | Set the job name. |
Maximum tags to attach to created EBS snapshots
The maximum number of tags that can be attached to a created EBS snapshot is 50. If you try to attach more than 50 tags when executing a job, an error will occur. 3 tags (Name, cm-Task, and creation_info) must be attached to the EBS snapshot task. Please be careful not to exceed 50 tags together with the tags to be copied and the tags specified in the task's configuration screen.
Regarding generation management of created EBS snapshots
The EBS snapshot created by the job has a tag cm-Task. The value is the name of the task that created the EBS snapshot. Generation management is performed within an EBS snapshot that has the same EBS as the backup source and the same cm-Task tag value. EBS snapshots created by another task or manually created EBS snapshots are not deleted in job generation management.
Please note that if the task name is changed during operation, EBS snapshots created prior to the task name will not be included in the generation management.
EBS snapshots without the cm-Task tag will not be deleted by the job, so if you want to keep the EBS snapshots you created, delete the cm-Task tag.
Regarding the restoration of created EBS snapshots
If you want to restore a volume from the created EBS snapshot, please refer to the documentation on the official website.
Restore EBS volumes from VSS-enabled EBS snapshots
Replace an Amazon EBS volume using a previous snapshot
Notes on job execution
A job will fail if
- IAM role not attached or insufficient privileges required to take VSS snapshots
- If the VSS component is not installed on the EC2 instance
- If the EC2 instance is not running