Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager

Automate lifecycle management of Amazon EBS Snapshots and Amazon EBS-backed AMIs

Overview

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager provides an automated, policy-based lifecycle management solution for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) Snapshots and EBS-backed Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Automate the creation of point-in-time copy of your block storage data with user-defined policies that you can customize based on data protection needs. Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager requires no scripting or special training. The graphical user interface (GUI) makes it easier to automate the creation, retention, and deletion of EBS Snapshots and AMIs. This can be done at regular frequencies and with custom cron expressions. This feature removes the need to manage your code, mitigating the human error associated with maintaining scripts.

When combined with the monitoring features of Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager provides a complete lifecycle management and backup solution for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and individual EBS volumes at no additional cost.

illustration of data

Use cases and benefits

How it works

  • Amazon EBS Snapshots policy
  • Diagram of the policy creation workflow, which automates management of EBS Snapshots.
  • Amazon EBS-backed AMI policy
  • Diagram of the policy creation workflow, which automates management of EBS-backed AMIs.
  • Event-based policy
  •  Diagram of the event-based policy creation workflow.