Amazon Announces Faster Cross-region EBS Snapshot Copy

Posted on: Jun 11, 2013

We are excited to announce a performance enhancement to EBS Snapshot Copy, making it faster to copy snapshots across AWS regions. Starting today, we will only transfer the data that has changed since your last snapshot copy, thus transferring and storing less data and completing the copy faster.

Last December, we launched EBS Snapshot Copy to accelerate your geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery. With this enhancement, snapshot copies take even less time to complete. You can now make more frequent copies to other regions, making it easier for you to develop highly available applications.

You can copy a snapshot by simply selecting it in the AWS Management Console, setting the destination region and starting the copy. You can also access it via the EC2 Command Line Interface or the EC2 API as described on the EBS Snapshot Copy page. The copied snapshots behave the same as other snapshots in the destination region. You will be charged for the data transferred and for the snapshot data stored in the destination region.

This enhancement also improves the performance of EC2 AMI Copy. With EC2 AMI Copy, you can develop your AMIs in one region, and then copy them to other regions to develop a consistent, multi-region deployment.

You can learn more about EBS Snapshot Copy by visiting the Amazon EBS Documentation and about AMI Copy by visiting the EC2 User’s Guide.