How do I create a snapshot of an Amazon EBS RAID array?

Short description

To create snapshots for Amazon EBS volumes that are configured in a RAID array, use the multi-volume snapshot feature of your instance. The multi-volume snapshot feature is a one-click solution that takes individual, point-in-time backups of all Amazon EBS volumes attached to your instance. This process makes sure that the backup of your Amazon EBS volumes attached to the instance are in sync relative to each other, resulting in an accurate restore of the Amazon EBS volumes in RAID.

Note: You can automate snapshot creation using the Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.

Resolution

Note: If you receive errors when running AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, make sure that you’re using the most recent AWS CLI version.

Use the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI to create snapshots.

Note: After the snapshots are created, each snapshot is treated like an individual snapshot. It's a best practice that you tag your multiple volume snapshots to manage them together during operations such as restore, copy, or retention.

AWS Management Console

1.    Open the Amazon EC2 console.

2.    Under Elastic Block Store, select Snapshots.

3.    Select Create Snapshot.

4.    Choose Instance as the resource type.

5.    Select the instance ID from the drop-down menu.

6.    (Optional) Enter a Description of the snapshot.

7.    (Optional) Select Copy Tags to automatically copy tags from the source volume to the corresponding snapshots.

8.    Click Create Snapshot.

AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)

Use the CreateSnapshots API.

create-snapshots
[--description <value>]
--instance-specification <value>
[--tag-specifications <value>]
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--copy-tags-from-source <value>]
[--cli-input-json <value>]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

For parameter descriptions and example calls, refer to AWS CLI Command Reference - create-snapshots.

Related information

Taking crash-consistent snapshots across multiple Amazon EBS volumes on an Amazon EC2 instance

Creating an Amazon EBS snapshot - Multi-volume snapshots

RAID configuration on Windows

RAID configuration on Linux

Benchmark EBS volumes