Copy an Amazon EBS volume - Amazon EBS
InitializationEncryptionConsiderationsPricingCopy a volume

Copy an Amazon EBS volume

You can create an instant point-in-time copy of an Amazon EBS volume within the same Availability Zone. A volume copy begins as a crash-consistent, point in time copy of the source volume. It includes all the data blocks written to the source volume at the time the volume copy initialization begins. The volume copy gets its own unique volume ID. Volume copies are created immediately and can be attached to an Amazon EC2 instance once it reaches the available state. Using volume copies, you can quickly copy your production data for test and development environments.

Initialization

Volume copies are initialized after creation. During initialization, the data blocks are copied from the source volume and written to the volume copy in the background. The volume remains in the initializing state until initialization completes.

Performance during initialization

Copy operations do not affect the performance of the source volume. You can continue using the source volume normally during the copy process. Copied volumes can be accessed instantly without waiting for the data to be copied from the source volume. Volume copies provide instant access to data with single-digit millisecond latency, however, actual latency might vary depending on the volume type. During initialization, the volume copy delivers baseline performance equal to the lowest of the following three values:

  • 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s

  • The provisioned performance for the source volume

  • The provisioned performance for the volume copy

The volume copy can exceed the baseline performance when the following criteria are met:

  1. Both the source volume and volume copy are provisioned with more than 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s.

  2. The source volume has unutilized performance capacity (driven performance is less than provisioned performance)

For example, if the source volume is provisioned with 10,000 IOPS and your workload is currently driving only 5,000 IOPS, and the volume copy is provisioned with 10,000 IOPS, the volume copy can achieve performance higher than the 3,000 IOPS baseline performance during initialization by using the source volume's unutilized 5,000 IOPS.

Initialization duration

The time it takes to initialize a volume copy depends on the size of the block data written to the source volume at the time of creating the volume copy. Volume copies are initialized on a best-effort basis, with the following general guidelines. For the first 1 TiB of data blocks, volume initialization takes up to 6 hours. For each subsequent 1 TiB of data blocks up to 16 TiB, initialization takes 1.2 hours per TiB. For written data larger than 16 TiB, initialization takes 24 hours.

Monitor initialization progress

You can monitor the initialization progress using the describe-volume-status AWS CLI command or Amazon EventBridge. For more information, see Monitor the status of Amazon EBS volume initialization.

Encryption

Copies of encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted with the same KMS key as the source volume. You can't copy unencrypted volumes.

Considerations

  • You can create copies from encrypted source volumes only. You can't create copies from unencrypted source volumes.

  • You can create only one volume copy from a source volume at a time. You can create subsequent copies of the same source volume only once the previous volume copy has been fully initialized.

  • You can have a maximum of 5 in-progress volume copies per Region. If you exceed this quota, you get the CopyVolumesLimitExceeded error. You can request a quota increase if needed.

  • The volume copy must be created in the same Availability Zone as the source volume.

  • The size of the volume copy must be equal to or greater than the size of the source volume.

  • You can't copy a volume copy while it is being created or initialized.

  • To create a volume copy, the source volume must be in the available or in-use state, and volume modifications must be in the completed or optimizing state.

  • Volume copies are subject to the same account and Regional storage and IOPS quotas as regular Amazon EBS volumes. For more information, see Amazon EBS quotas.

  • If you delete the source volume while the copy operation is in progress, the copy operation still completes.

  • Tags assigned to the source volume are not assigned to the volume copy.

  • You can't create copies from volumes on Outposts or in Wavelength Zones.

Pricing

When you initiate volume copy operation, you are charged a one-time fee per GiB of data blocks written to the volume copy. After the volume copy is created, it is charged the same way as any other Amazon EBS volume in your account. For more information, see Amazon EBS pricing.

Copy a volume

Use one of the following methods to copy an Amazon EBS volume.

Console
To copy a volume

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Volumes.

  3. Select the volume to copy and choose Actions, Copy volume.

  4. For Volume type, choose the volume type for the copy. The default volume type is gp3.

  5. For Size, enter the size for the volume copy, in GiBs. The size must be equal to or greater than the size of the source volume.

  6. (io1, io2, and gp3 only) For IOPS, enter the maximum number of input/output operations per second (IOPS) for the volume copy.

  7. (gp3 only) For Throughput, enter the throughput for the volume copy, in MiB/s.

  8. (io1 and io2 only) To enable the volume copy for Amazon EBS Multi-Attach, select Enable Multi-Attach.

  9. (Optional) To assign custom tags to the volume copy, in the Tags section, choose Add tag, and then enter a tag key and value pair.

  10. Choose Copy volume.

  11. The copied volume enters the creating state and then transitions to available shortly after. You can then attach it to an Amazon EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone.

AWS CLI
To copy a volume

Use the copy-volumes command.

The following example creates a volume copy of vol-01234567890abcdef with the gp3 volume type, a size of 100 GiB, and throughput of 250 MiB/s.

aws ec2 copy-volumes \
--source-volume-id vol-01234567890abcdef \
--volume-type gp3 \
--size 100 \ 
--throughput 250
PowerShell
To copy a volume

Use the Copy-EC2Volume cmdlet.

The following example creates a volume copy of vol-01234567890abcdef with the gp3 volume type, a size of 100 GiB, and throughput of 250 MiB/s.

Copy-EC2Volume `
-SourceVolumeId vol-01234567890abcdef `
-VolumeType gp3 `
-Size 100 ` 
-Throughput 250