Taking EC2 Snapshots

When you launch an EC2 instance snapshots are not automated by default. It is your data and one of the components of the shared responsibility model puts the decisions of data retention for non managed services with the customer. It's your data and you decide it's residency and backup frequency.

Complete instance backups for instances with multiple EBS volumes can be automated through AWS Backup. Volume Snapshots can also be automated through Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager. You can define backup and retention schedules for EBS snapshots by creating lifecycle policies based on tags defined for volumes.

Regularly back up your EBS volumes using Amazon EBS snapshots, to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from your instance to save the configuration as a template for launching future instances.

You can also create an AMI and manual snapshot of all of the volume of an instance from the EC2 console of an instance. Select the instance. Navigate to Image and Templates --> Create Image (Illustrated in the attached image)