Amazon EBS Direct API Backup Process for Amazon EC2 Instances Including Amazon VPC Resources

When Amazon VPC protection is enabled, the EBS direct API backup operation includes the following stages:

1. For each instance, create an AMI.

   This operation creates crash-consistent snapshots of instance volumes.

2. Write the instance configuration file, the network configuration JSON file, and the instance metadata to the backup index.

3. Read the blocks from the snapshots, and then save the data to the storage media.

   When a call is made to the GetSnapshotBlock API, the API returns a checksum of the data block. On the access node, the checksum of the received block is calculated, and compared with the checksum returned by AWS. If the checksums are different, then the received data is considered corrupt. The received block is discarded and read again.

4. Retain the AMI and snapshots on AWS for incremental backups.