Enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy - Elastic Compute Service

Method 1: Enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy on the Snapshots page

On the Snapshots page of the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) console, you can enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy for a system disk or data disk.

Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Storage & Snapshots > Snapshots.
In the top navigation bar, select a region.
On the Snapshots page, click the Automatic Snapshot Policies tab.
On the Automatic Snapshot Policies tab, find the automatic snapshot policy that you want to modify and click Enable or Disable Policy in the Actions column.
In the Enable or Disable Policy dialog box, perform the following operations:
- To enable the snapshot policy, click the Disks Without Policy Enabled or Shared Block Storage Devices Without Policy Enabled tab, select the disks or shared block storage devices for which you want to enable the policy, and then click Enable Policy in the lower part of the dialog box.
- To disable the snapshot policy, click the Disks with Policy Enabled or Shared Block Storage Devices with Policy Enabled tab, select the disks or shared block storage devices for which you want to disable the policy, and then click Cancel in the lower part of the dialog box.

Method 2: Enable an automatic snapshot policy when you create an ECS instance

When you create an ECS instance, you can enable an automatic snapshot policy for a system disk or data disk of the instance.

Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Instances & Images > Instances.
In the top navigation bar, select a region.
On the Instances page, click Create Instance.
In the Snapshot section of the Basic Configurations wizard page, select an automatic snapshot policy for the system disk or data disk.
For information about other parameters, see Create an instance by using the wizard.

Method 3: Enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy on the Disks page

On the Disks page of the ECS console, you can enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy for a system disk or data disk.

Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Storage & Snapshots > Disks.
In the top navigation bar, select a region.
On the Disks page, find the disk that you want to configure and click Set Automatic Snapshot Policy in the Actions column.
In the Configure Automatic Snapshot Policy dialog box, select Enable Automatic Snapshot Policy.or Disable Automatic Snapshot Policy.

If you select Enable Automatic Snapshot Policy, you can select an existing policy or create a policy.
Click OK.

Result

After the automatic snapshot policy is enabled or disabled, you can choose Storage & Snapshots > Snapshots in the left-side navigation pane. On the Snapshots page, click the Automatic Snapshot Policies tab. In the Associated Disks or Associated Shared Block Storage Devices column, you can view the number of disks or shared block storage devices for which the automatic snapshot policy is enabled.

When an automatic snapshot policy is triggered, an automatic snapshot whose prefix is auto2.0 is created for the disk.

Note If the previous snapshot creation task of the disk is still in progress at the point in time when the automatic snapshot policy is triggered, the system does not create automatic snapshots.

All automatic snapshots created based on an automatic snapshot policy are named in the auto2.0_yyyyMMdd_SnapshotPolicyId format. For example, auto2.0_20170731_sp-m5e2w2jutw8bv31***** indicates the automatic snapshot created on July 31, 2017. The following section describes all fields contained in the format:

auto2.0: the automatic snapshot.
yyyyMMdd: the date when the snapshot is created. yyyy stands for year, MM for month, and dd for day.
SnapshotPolicyId: the ID of the automatic snapshot policy used.