I would like to delete my DB instance.before delete I will create final manual snapshot. I understood snapshot is not full backup.it is incremental.which means that only the data that has changed after your most recent snapshot saved .

so,I would like to know RDS restore DB from only final snapshot event if deleted other created all manual snapshot.

Please help me.Thanks a lot.

AWD RDS final manual snapshot are full or incremental ? final manual snapshot can be restore, event if deleted you taken all other manual snapshots

CodePudding user response：

Although the snapshots are incremental, this process is done in a way that you can restore from the latest backup even if older snapshots are removed. So in short, you can restore your RDS database using your final manual snapshot. See the link for the underlying details.

Deleting previous snapshots of a volume does not affect your ability to create volumes from later snapshots of that volume - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-deleting-snapshot.html

CodePudding user response：

All snapshots are full snapshots, but all snapshots are also incremental snapshots.

Think of a disk as containing lots of blocks. When a snapshot is initiated, every used block is copied to backup storage (think of it as S3, but not in your AWS account).

Let's say another snapshot was initiated one hour later. Only a few blocks would have changed, so this snapshot only makes a copy of the blocks that are different, but it creates an 'index' of the full disk and points to blocks in the previous backup and this backup.

So, snapshots consist of an 'index' of blocks, and copies of the actual blocks.

When restoring a snapshot, the index is consulted and all associated blocks are restored.

If a snapshot is deleted, any blocks used in other snapshots will be retained. So, deleting a snapshot simply removes the 'index', plus any blocks that were only part of that specific snapshot.

Bottom line: Don't worry. AWS handles snapshots in the safest possible way.