I found the following Python script online, but it didn’t really work too well :
http://aws-musings.com/manage-ebs-snapshots-with-a-python-script/
EBS – Elastic Block Storage …
I had to easy_install boto, to get it to work.
I’m not sure the Debian python-boto package in Lenny is up to date.
Anyway, $server now has :
from boto.ec2.connection import EC2Connection
from boto.ec2.regioninfo import RegionInfo
from datetime import datetime
import sys
# Substitute your access key and secret key here
aws_access_key = 'MY_AWS_ACCESS_KEY'
aws_secret_key = 'MY_AWS_SECRET_KEY'
# Change to your region/endpoint...
region = RegionInfo(endpoint='eu-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com', name='eu-west-1')
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
print "Usage: python manage_snapshots.py volume_id number_of_snapshots_to_keep description"
print "volume id and number of snapshots to keep are required. description is optional"
sys.exit(1)
vol_id = sys.argv[1]
keep = int(sys.argv[2])
conn = EC2Connection(aws_access_key, aws_secret_key, region=region)
volumes = conn.get_all_volumes([vol_id])
print "%s" % repr(volumes)
volume = volumes[0]
description = 'Created by manage_snapshots.py at ' + datetime.today().isoformat(' ')
if len(sys.argv) > 3:
description = sys.argv[3]
if volume.create_snapshot(description):
print 'Snapshot created with description: ' + description
snapshots = volume.snapshots()
snapshot = snapshots[0]
def date_compare(snap1, snap2):
if snap1.start_time < snap2.start_time:
return -1
elif snap1.start_time == snap2.start_time:
return 0
return 1
snapshots.sort(date_compare)
delta = len(snapshots) - keep
for i in range(delta):
print 'Deleting snapshot ' + snapshots[i].description
snapshots[i].delete()
And then plonk something like the following in /etc/cron.daily/backup_ebs :
for volume in vol-xxxx vol-yyyyy vol-zzzz do /path/to/above/python/script.py $volume 7 "Backup of $volume on $(date +%F-%H:%m)" done
Which keeps 7 backups for each volume with a time/date stamp in each description.
Nifty 🙂
A slightly more Pythonic thing to do instead of the date_compare function to sort would be to use:
from operator import attrgetter#...
snapshots.sort(key=attrgetter("start_time"))
And your for-loop could be:
for snapshot in snapshots[:-keep]:I’ve put together a web-based application to do this, called Ebs2s3. More details are here: http://ajmfulcher.blogspot.com/2011/04/ebs2s3-automated-backup-for-amazon-ebs.html
Hope this helps out!
There’s a problem with the script as it is listed: in the middle of the script, there are a whole bunch of lines that are missing newlines, and so they’re together in a single line.
wch – thanks – formatting problem ought to be fixed now! thanks.
Thank you for sharing your script!
Could you share a bit more about what was not good with the script in reference please?
I’m trying it out and if it doesn’t work, I’m gonna try yours 🙂
Eric – I suspect I wasn’t able to get it installed / working… sorry, it’s been some time since I’ve done anything with EC2/EBS so can’t comment more.
Hi David,
Thanks for replying!
I’ve tried out the script from aws-musings.com and got “volume does not exist” error.
Then I tried your script and that problem went away.
I’ve only got “socket.gaierror: [Errno -2] Name or service not known”
I’m supposed I’m much closer now, thanks to you 🙂
Hey.
I change it a little bit to run automatically backup all volumes instead of giving the script the volume id’s..
It use default 4 snapshots to keep
from boto.ec2.connection import EC2Connection
from datetime import datetime
import sys
def date_compare(snap1, snap2):
if snap1.start_time < snap2.start_time:
return -1
elif snap1.start_time == snap2.start_time:
return 0
return 1
# Substitute your access key and secret key here
aws_access_key = 'your_access_key'
aws_secret_key = 'your_secret_key'
#number of snapshoot to keep.
keep = 4
# connect to amazon mws service.
conn = EC2Connection(aws_access_key, aws_secret_key)
volumes = conn.get_all_volumes()
for volume in volumes:
description = 'manage_snapshots.py at ' + datetime.today().isoformat(' ')
if volume.create_snapshot(description):
print 'Snapshot created with description: ' + description
snapshots = volume.snapshots()
snapshots.sort(date_compare)
delta = len(snapshots) – keep
for i in range(delta):
print 'Deleting snapshot ' + snapshots[i].volume_id
snapshots[i].delete()
region endpoint string is wrong. instead of using “eu-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com”, please use “ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com”