Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager
Automate the lifetime management of AMIs backed by EBS and EBS snapshots.
Overview
For Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots and Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) powered by EBS, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager offers an automated, policy-based lifecycle management solution. With user-defined policies that you may modify according to your data security requirements, you can automate the production of point-in-time copies of your block storage data. Neither programming nor specialized training are needed for Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.
EBS Snapshots and AMIs may be created, saved, and deleted more easily with the use of the graphical user interface (GUI). Custom cron expressions and regular frequencies can be used for this. By eliminating the need to manage your code, this feature reduces the possibility of human mistake that comes with script maintenance.
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager offers a comprehensive lifecycle management and backup solution for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and individual EBS volumes at no extra cost when paired with the monitoring capabilities of Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail.
Benefits and use cases
Protect data and meet compliance
Enforce a regular backup routine to safeguard your data. For your priceless data, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager offers automated process management together with a data security strategy. Learn to build efficient disaster recovery plans that backup your data to separate accounts. For Amazon EBS users, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager offers a practical way to save backups for audit or compliance requirements.
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager, a component of Amazon EBS, complies with SOC, PCI, FedRAMP, ISO, and HIPAA regulations among other regulations. For complete protection of all important workloads in your account, you may also set account-level default policies.
Automate backup and monitoring
Establish a schedule and policy to automatically create, save, and remove AMIs and EBS Snapshots at certain times. By offering pre-scripts to halt I/O and flush the buffer to disk, as well as post-scripts to resume I/O operations and patch your workloads, you can automate the development of application-consistent EBS snapshots. You may coordinate steps prior to and during snapshot initialization by bringing your own AWS Systems Manager (SSM) documents, or you can use pre-built scripts that are accessible through existing SSM documents.
You may build application-consistent snapshots for Windows programs, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SAP HANA, InterSystems IRIS, and Electronic Health Records systems with the use of the SSM documentation.
Using Amazon CloudWatch, which gathers raw data and transforms it into understandable, almost real-time metrics, you can keep an eye on your Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager rules. These metrics allow you to track the precise number of EBS Snapshots and EBS-backed AMIs that your policies produce, remove, and copy over time. Alarms that trigger actions or alerts when certain thresholds are reached can also be created.
Reduce storage costs
Reduce expenses by regularly using tailored rules to backup your EBS volumes according to the data’s criticality. You may better manage your EBS resources with the aid of Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager. For your most important applications, you may create a policy that makes it easier to create and maintain EBS snapshots on a daily basis. For cold data, you can use a less frequent schedule. To cut storage expenses, you may also create a policy that deletes out-of-date snapshots on a regular basis.
When an AMI backed by EBS reaches the end of its retention period, Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager will automatically deregister the AMI and remove the underlying snapshots. This saves you from having to manually remove photos, which might be expensive if you forget.
Built for flexibility
Get the freedom to build and maintain policies using Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS SDKs, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and API. You may also execute rules for three other resource types with Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager: an EC2 instance, a collection of EBS volumes connected to an EC2 instance, or individual EBS volumes. Additionally, you may encrypt the snapshots using a distinct AWS Key Management Service (KMS) key and set up event-based rules to automatically copy the images to various accounts. In the event that any accounts are compromised, this gives your data an extra degree of safety.
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager Pricing
Although you may use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) for free, you have to pay for the resources it oversees, like:
EBS Screenshots:
- Monthly storage costs $0.05 per gigabyte.
- A 500 GB snapshot costs $25 per month.
Transfer of Data:
- Free snapshots in the same area.
- Cross-region copies are subject to additional fees.
Volumes of EBS:
- Using typical AWS EBS pricing, you pay for the storage of the volumes that DLM manages.
