Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager
- What it is
- Automates the creation, retention, cross-Region copy, and deletion of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots and EBS-backed AMIs, driven by policies instead of scripts or cron.
- How a policy works
- Targets resources by tag, so any new volume carrying the tag is covered the moment it exists.
- Sets a schedule (every 2–24 hours, daily, weekly, monthly) and a retention rule (keep N snapshots, or keep for N days).
- Optional: cross-Region copy for disaster recovery, cross-account sharing, and fast snapshot restore.
- Why it matters for cost
- The service itself is free — you pay only for snapshot storage.
- Its real value is the deletion half: snapshots nobody prunes accumulate silently and bill forever. See Cost Optimization.
- Not to be confused with
- AWS Backup — the central, cross-service backup plane (EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, EFS, and more) with vaults, compliance reporting, and Vault Lock. Use DLM for EBS-only snapshot hygiene; use AWS Backup when one policy must cover many services or an auditor is involved.
- lifecycle policies — the same idea applied to Amazon S3 objects, not block snapshots.
- Exam signal
- “Automate EBS snapshot creation and deletion”, “enforce a snapshot retention schedule” → Data Lifecycle Manager.
- “Centrally manage and audit backups across AWS services” → AWS Backup.