Unmount Linux File-systems Before Snapshot

Question

I have an EC2 instance running ubuntu 20.  I use several EBS volumes for ext4 file-systems.  I want to backup the volumes with snapshots.  Is it necessary for the snapshots to be taken while the file-systems are unmounted?

Accepted Answer

Normally it depends on type of workload running on the Filesystem.

Without unmount, snapshot is crash consistent.  Based on workload (e.g. database), quiescing it will give app/db consistent snapshot.  Below are some good blogs to manage the snapshot process and crash consistent  snapshot.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/automating-amazon-ebs-snapshots-management-using-data-lifecycle-manager/

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/taking-crash-consistent-snapshots-across-multiple-amazon-ebs-volumes-on-an-amazon-ec2-instance/

Unmount Linux File-systems Before Snapshot

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