Successive EBS Snapshots only record any changes from the original volume or previous snapshot. I’m presuming this means that to use a snapshot as a backup all previous snapshots need to exist in order to re-create a volume. Is there a limit on this? E.g. if a Daily snapshot were used as a means of backup then after a year there would be 365 snapshots. After 10 years 3650. Would this work and still allow a volume to be recovered?
1 Answers
As far as my understanding goes related to this topic, every snapshot, even considered incremental ones, behaves like a full snapshot. I was never able to find how many Snapshots would you be able to have for an EBS volume, but as it seems, it is like that as there could be a digitally unlimited amount of them.
Anyhow, you can do a lifecycle management policy, to avoid the billing increments [as the sum of all the snapshot can far surpass the amount of GB that you have on your disk, as it will track anything changed and keep a copy of it], and if you delete any older volume, even the first one that you took, that difference will go to the next one. Meaning, that if you delete an old snapshot, every subsequent snapshots that you took and were based on that one, will keep on working, as the snapshot next to the one you deleted, will inherit all the blocks and keep a fully functional copy of it.
Hope I was of any help 🙂
Cheers!