title: Amazon EC2 EBS backup: AMI vs Snapshot
body: <p>I am trying to create a backup mechanism for our server, so that if my system crashes, I should be able to create the whole system by running a single script</p>
  
  <p>After going through Amazon documentation, this is my understanding of creating a backup and restoring</p>
  
  <p>Backup </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Create a AMI Image (this can be updated monthly)</li>
  <li>Create a snapshot (This can be done using a daily script creating a snapshot)</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Restore (A script to)</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Create an EBS instance using AMI</li>
  <li>Attach the EBS volume to Instance created </li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Now my Questions is </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Is it the best way to take a backup and restore?</li>
  <li>Do we actually need to backup 2 things, AMI and EBS volume (using snapshot), Can we just keep snapshots?</li>
  <li>I understand this cannot work for a local instance store instance, as there is no snapshot functionality. So how can I create a backup and restore process for local instance store instances?</li>
  </ol>