AWS credential and creating EBS Snapshot(学习笔记)

Types of Security Credentials

 Email address and password

       Login to AWS Management Console,  AWS Discussion Forums, or AWS Support Center

 IAM user name and password

       AWS Management Console, AWSDiscussion Forums, or AWS Support Center

       ASES send mail service require

 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

       Provides an extra level of security 通过多因子认证增强账户安全，能够在用户名称和密码之外再额外增加一层保护。

关于保障AWS云中数据安全的几种方式： http://www.csdn.net/article/2014-07-25/2820864

 Access keys (access key ID and secret access key)

       To sign programmatic requests that you make to AWS whether you're using the AWS SDK, REST, or Query APIs 调用API所需 常用场景

       CLI

       temporary security credentials（可以继续深入）

 Key pairs

       Only for Amazon EC2 and AmazonCloudFront. For Amazon CloudFront, you use key pairs to create signed URLs forprivate content

 X.509certificates

       Use X.509 certificates only when you must sign SOAP-basedrequests

Creating an Amazon EBS snapshot

Points:

You can take a snapshot of an attached volume that is in use. However, snapshots only capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume at the time the snapshot command is issued. This may exclude any data that has been cached by any applications other operating system. If you can pause any file writes to the volume long enough to take a snapshot, your snapshot should be complete. However, if you can't pause all file writes to the volume, you should unmount the volume from within the instance, issue the snapshot command, and then remount the volume to ensure a consistent and complete snapshot. You may remount and use your volume while the snapshot status is pending.

在create snapshot 时，其实就是执行创建快照命令，在命令执行的同时，已经写入的数据会被创建进快照。且EBS volume还是处于可用状态（read write），但是最佳实践是 unattach from the instance.  可以保证在创建快照时是完整的。

To create a snapshot for Amazon EBS volumes that serve as root devices, you should stop the instance before taking the snapshot.

需要注意的是，在为root device 为EBS type创建快照时，需要将instance停止。

 Q:  When you successfully create a snapshot , where will it store. On the EBS volume or S3

快照的用途： You can use snapshot copies to create backups of data, to create new Amazon EBS volumes, or to create Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)