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Elastic Compute Service:Reduce snapshot fees

Last Updated:Mar 28, 2024

Snapshot is a frequently used feature for data backup and disaster recovery. You are charged for snapshot storage fees based on the size of snapshots. This topic describes how to reduce snapshot fees based on the number of snapshots.

For more information, see Snapshots.

Maintain an appropriate number of snapshots

You are charged snapshot storage fees based on the size of snapshots. More snapshots require more storage space and result in higher snapshot fees. We recommend that you maintain an appropriate number of snapshots based on your business requirements. The following table describes the recommended number of snapshots in different scenarios.

Scenario

Snapshot creation frequency

Retention period

Description

Core application

Once every day or every other day

Several months or longer

We recommend that you create and store snapshots based on data importance.

Non-core application

Once every week or every other week

Several days or weeks

We recommend that you create and store snapshots based on data importance.

System disk

Whenever needed

One or two snapshots

We recommend that you do not store critical application data in the system disk.

Software upgrade

Delete snapshots immediately after they are used.

We recommend that you delete snapshots immediately after they are used to reduce fees.

Modification of critical files

Migration of application data

Test environment

Delete snapshots

When you want to free up space or when the maximum number of snapshots has been reached, you can delete snapshots that are no longer needed. For more information, see Delete a snapshot. For more information about the limits of snapshots, see Limits.

Disable unnecessary automatic snapshot policies

You can disable snapshot policies that are no longer needed to prevent redundant snapshots and reduce the size of snapshots. This reduces snapshot storage fees. For more information, see Enable or disable an automatic snapshot policy.

Note

To improve fault tolerance, we recommend that you retain at least one snapshot policy for core services.

We recommend that you purchase storage capacity units to offset the storage fees of snapshots. For more information, see Storage capacity units.