Automatic EC2 Volume Back-Up (Snapshot)

Stand-alone script designed to run via cron or systemd to back-up EC2 volumes on a regular schedule.

All volumes associated with the EC2 instance are backed up.

This script does not freeze the volume or a database or wait for inactivity. It just creates snapshots. High traffic servers should not use this as their only means of backup since there is a chance the database could be mid-write during the snapshot start which will break the database.

Usage

After the required configuration settings are set up in the .env file, simply executing php backup.php will perform the backup. The script has additional options such as --no-prune to prevent the script from removing old snapshots. If the configuration setting ENABLE is set to false the script will not perform any actions. To override the ENABLE setting, --force can be used. The script will also respond to --help to outline the usage.

Setup

Copy the repository (via git clone or upload files) to your server. My recommendation is to install in your home directory (ec2-user or ubuntu).

From this directory, run composer install
Copy (or rename/move) the .env.example file to the same directory
Add the required AWS credentials (see below) to the .env file
Modify the TAGS value in .env

You will want to set up this script to run on a regular schedule. For instance, I run this every day. Examples using Crontab and SystemD are outlined below.

Requires IAM permission

It is STRONGLY recommended to create an IAM use specifically for programmatic use. The script requires AWS credentials to be stored in a hidden file.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "VisualEditor0",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeVolumeStatus",
                "ec2:DeleteSnapshot",
                "ec2:DescribeTags",
                "ec2:DescribeSnapshotAttribute",
                "ec2:DescribeVolumes",
                "ec2:CreateSnapshot",
                "ec2:CreateTags",
                "ec2:DescribeSnapshots",
                "ec2:DescribeVolumeAttribute"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Schedule Execution via Cron

The following example will run the backup script every day at 3am UTC (server time) and send script outputs to backup.log in the home directory.

Be sure to change the path to the script and your log file.

0 3 * * * /usr/bin/env php /home/ubuntu/backup/backup.php >> /home/ubuntu/backup.log 2>&1

Schedule Execution via SystemD

The following example will run the backup script every day at 3am UTC (server time). Script outputs are handled directly by SystemD and are available through journalctl.

Create the two following files (requires root permission). Be sure to change the path to the script.

/etc/systemd/system/ec2-backup.service

[Unit]
Description=Create and rotate EBS snapshots on AWS for EC2 instances

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env php /home/ubuntu/backup/backup.php
User=ubuntu

/etc/systemd/system/ec2-backup.timer

[Unit]
Description=Run ec2-backup.service every day

[Timer]
OnCalendar=03:00
AccuracySec=1h

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

To activate the schedule, execute the command (noting the sudo use)

sudo systemctl start ec2-backup.timer

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