Create Snapshots

Overview

The Create Snapshots action allows you to create EBS Snapshots of targeted EC2 Volumes.

Working in conjunction with the Copy Snapshots action, these actions automate EBS snapshot management, bunkering, and disaster recovery.

Read more about EBS Snapshots

Permissions

The action uses the following AWS EC2 API endpoints to target and create EBS Snapshots:

• CreateSnapshot
• CreateTags
• DescribeVolumes

Configuring the action

Targeting

Volumes can be targeted by Tag groups, or all volumes in the selected context that are attached to an EC2 Instance.

Snapshot Name

If a custom name for the created Snapshots is defined, this will be applied using a tag with the key Name.

Snapshot Description

If a custom description is defined, this will be applied to the created Snapshots.

Tagging

You can choose to have the action automatically tag the snapshots it creates with the tags of the source Volume, the EC2 instance the source volume is attached to, and you can add additional tags.

When defining the snapshot name, description, or adding additional tags, you can use the following parameters which will be substituted at runtime:
GS::RuleName will be replaced by the rule’s name
GS::UTCDate will be replaced by the current date
GS::UTCDatePlusXDays will be replaced by the current date + X days
AWS::DeviceName will be replaced by the device name (e.g. /dev/sda1)
AWS::InstanceId will be replaced by the Instance ID
AWS::VolumeId will be replaced by the Volume ID