A simple SHELL script which creates EBS snapshot of the volume for the given INSTANCE-ID

EBS-Snapshot.sh

#!/bin/sh

# export EC2_HOME='/etc/ec2'  # Make sure you use the API tools, not the AMI tools
# export EC2_BIN=$EC2_HOME/bin
# export PATH=$PATH:$EC2_BIN
# I know all of the above is good to have solution, but not re-usable
# I have captured all of the above in a particular file and lemme execute it
source /etc/environment

EC2_BIN=$EC2_HOME/bin

# store the certificates and private key to your amazon account
MY_CERT='/path/to/certificate-file'
MY_KEY='/path/to/private-file'
# fetching the instance-id from the metadata repository
MY_INSTANCE_ID='ec2-instance-id'

# temproary file
TMP_FILE='/tmp/rock-ebs-info.txt'

# get list of locally attached volumes via EC2 API:
$EC2_BIN/ec2-describe-volumes -C $MY_CERT -K $MY_KEY > $TMP_FILE
VOLUME_LIST=$(cat $TMP_FILE | grep ${MY_INSTANCE_ID} | awk '{ print $2 }')

sync

#create the snapshots
echo "Create EBS Volume Snapshot - Process started at $(date +%m-%d-%Y-%T)"
echo ""
echo $VOLUME_LIST
for volume in $(echo $VOLUME_LIST); do
   NAME=$(cat $TMP_FILE | grep Name | grep $volume | awk '{ print $5 }')
   DESC=$NAME-$(date +%m-%d-%Y)
   echo "Creating Snapshot for the volume: $volume with description: $DESC"
   echo "Snapshot info below:"
   $EC2_BIN/ec2-create-snapshot -C $MY_CERT -K $MY_KEY -d $DESC $volume
   echo ""
done

echo "Process ended at $(date +%m-%d-%Y-%T)"
echo ""

rm -f $TMP_FILE