How can i provide options to customize the Snapshot creation and retention period for ec2 instances in aws
2 Answers
You can use the aws ec2 cli to manipulate your volume snapshot
For example
aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234abcd --description "This is my root volume snapshot."
As far as I know, there are no retention period for ec2 snapshots, this applies for RDS snapshots.
If you need to apply a retention period on your ec2 snapshots, you would need to manage this yourself, here a script example that would do something like it

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There are several scripts that are available online to help you with it, like this one: https://github.com/colinbjohnson/aws-missing-tools/tree/master/ec2-automate-backup
If you have a larger environment that you need to manage and if you need to tackle issues like application-consistent snapshots, different types of recovery options etc… You may want to look for a real backup solution to help you manage it. The company I work for, N2W Software, sells a product call Cloud Protection Manager that provides this functionality and more. If you’re interested, you can see our web site here: www.n2ws.com

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