Which solution will meet these requirements with the LEAST amount of effort?
Use an Amazon EventBridge (Amazon CloudWatch Events) scheduled rule to create snapshots of the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes.
Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (Amazon DLM) to create a snapshot lifecycle policy for both instances.
Create a batch job to generate automated snapshots of the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes.
Create an AWS Lambda function to copy the data to Amazon S3 Glacier.
Explanations:
While Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) can schedule tasks, creating EBS snapshots via a scheduled rule requires additional manual configuration, and it would not inherently manage retention or lifecycle policies.
Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) is designed specifically for automating the creation and retention of EBS snapshots. It allows setting up snapshot schedules (every 12 hours) and retention policies (7 days), which meets the company’s requirements with minimal effort.
A batch job for generating automated snapshots is more complex than using DLM. It would require custom scripting and management, adding unnecessary overhead when compared to DLM, which is a managed solution.
While AWS Lambda can automate processes, copying data to Amazon S3 Glacier is not an appropriate solution for EBS snapshot backups. S3 Glacier is a long-term archival storage service, not suited for frequent and recent backup retention like EBS snapshots.
I structure that the answer is:
Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (Amazon DLM) to create a snapshot lifecycle policy for both instances.