Maintaining cost-effective Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots

What is the most cost-effective approach for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots?

a. Maintain two snapshots: the original snapshot and the latest incremental snapshot.
b. Maintain a volume snapshot; subsequent snapshots will overwrite one another
c. Maintain a single snapshot; the latest snapshot is both Incremental and complete.
d. Maintain the most current snapshot, archive the original and incremental to Amazon Glacier.

Answer:

The most cost-effective approach for EBS snapshots is maintaining a single, latest snapshot.

Explanation:

The approach that provides the lowest cost for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) snapshots while still allowing full data restoration is to maintain a single snapshot; the latest snapshot is both incremental and complete.

Amazon EBS snapshots are incremental backups, meaning that only the blocks on the device that have changed after your most recent snapshot are saved. It's not necessary to maintain multiple snapshots when one will suffice. An incremental snapshot will only save changes since the last snapshot, which minimizes the storage used and thus minimizes cost.

This strategy is cost-effective because you are only storing the changes between snapshots, not the entire volume repeatedly.