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For an EC2 server I have running I am creating a snapshot of the EBS every night. The EBS has 500GB of space and 1500 / 3000 IOPS. On some days past week the snapshot creating process reached it maximum IOPS causing the server to be unavailable for 5 minutes to an hour. What can I do to prevent the snapshot to use the maximum IOPS? I am creating the snapshot using https://github.com/CaseyLabs/aws-ec2-ebs-automatic-snapshot-bash

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  • What is running on the server? The performance when taking a snapshot can vary depending on the amount of data, the amount of changed data, and the system load. What about I/O characteristics of your workloads?
    – dsmsk80
    Apr 6, 2017 at 8:34
  • Its running a webserver on ubuntu 14.04. The strange thing is that only 3 days past week it reached its max IO. The other days only 5%. Apr 6, 2017 at 8:41
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    I've read a lot about AWS preparing for architect pro, and have the three associate certs. I've never seen any reference anywhere to a snapshot consuming IOPS. It doesn't run from the instance, it's external to your instance, so it shouldn't consume IOPS. All I can find is " EBS snapshots provide enhanced data durability but may slightly degrade your application’s performance while the snapshot is in progress, here aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/… .
    – Tim
    Apr 6, 2017 at 8:42
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    I ran a snapshot on my instance, CloudWatch didn't even blink, but it's a small disk with not much changed. How much data changes on your disk each day? Try using AWS features to take the snapshot, rather than a third party tool. docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/events/…
    – Tim
    Apr 6, 2017 at 8:43
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    @Tim IOPS and throughput are primarily constrained by the volume -- by EBS itself -- not by the instance. There's no intrinsic reason why snapshots would not consume IOPS -- after all, they are reading data from the volume (directly, not via the instance). For sc1 and st1 volume types, this seems like documented behavior: "performance may drop as far as the volume's baseline value while the snapshot is in progress." Apr 6, 2017 at 11:54

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