Use CreateSnapshot with an Amazon SDK or CLI

To create a snapshot

This example command creates a snapshot of the volume with a volume ID of vol-1234567890abcdef0 and a short description to identify the snapshot.

Command:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description "This is my root volume snapshot"

Output:

{
    "Description": "This is my root volume snapshot",
    "Tags": [],
    "Encrypted": false,
    "VolumeId": "vol-1234567890abcdef0",
    "State": "pending",
    "VolumeSize": 8,
    "StartTime": "2018-02-28T21:06:01.000Z",
    "Progress": "",
    "OwnerId": "012345678910",
    "SnapshotId": "snap-066877671789bd71b"
}

To create a snapshot with tags

This example command creates a snapshot and applies two tags: purpose=prod and costcenter=123.

Command:

aws ec2 create-snapshot --volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0 --description 'Prod backup' --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=snapshot,Tags=[{Key=purpose,Value=prod},{Key=costcenter,Value=123}]'

Output:

{
    "Description": "Prod backup",
    "Tags": [
        {
            "Value": "prod",
            "Key": "purpose"
        },
        {
            "Value": "123",
            "Key": "costcenter"
        }
     ],
     "Encrypted": false,
     "VolumeId": "vol-1234567890abcdef0",
     "State": "pending",
     "VolumeSize": 8,
     "StartTime": "2018-02-28T21:06:06.000Z",
     "Progress": "",
     "OwnerId": "012345678910",
     "SnapshotId": "snap-09ed24a70bc19bbe4"
 }

Example 1: This example creates a snapshot of the specified volume.

New-EC2Snapshot -VolumeId vol-12345678 -Description "This is a test"

Output:

DataEncryptionKeyId :
Description         : This is a test
Encrypted           : False
KmsKeyId            :
OwnerAlias          :
OwnerId             : 123456789012
Progress            :
SnapshotId          : snap-12345678
StartTime           : 12/22/2015 1:28:42 AM
State               : pending
StateMessage        :
Tags                : {}
VolumeId            : vol-12345678
VolumeSize          : 20