When creating a snapshot of an EC2 instance for later use or to copy, it advises bringing down the VM to do so, however, it comes right back up. The AMI status still says it's "pending"; should I not log back in until it's complete?
2 Answers
Once the snapshot and/or AMI creation process has started, the EBS volumes are safe to use. Further changes will not be reflected in the EBS snapshot. So it is safe to login, or unlock your filesystem.
However, please note that until the snapshot process is complete, your EBS volume may appear "sluggish" or slower than usual. This is due to the fact that blocks from the EBS volume are being accessed for the snapshot.
answered Mar 19, 2013 at 13:29
You're good to go once the instance comes back up. It shuts down the instance to take a stable (i.e. no writing to the disks) snapshot for it to work off.
