Amazon EBS snapshot lifecycle

The lifecycle of an Amazon EBS snapshot starts with the creation process. You create snapshots from Amazon EBS volumes. You can use snapshots to restore new Amazon EBS volumes. You can create copies of snapshots either in the same Region, or in different Regions. You can share snapshots with other AWS accounts, either publicly or privately. Those accounts can restore volumes from the shared snapshots, or they can create copies of the shared snapshots in their own account. If you don't need immediate access to a snapshot, you can archive it to save on storage costs.

The following image shows actions that you can perform on your snapshots as part of the snapshot lifecycle.