News

AWS Introduces Amazon EBS Volume Clones for Instant Data Copying

• By Ammaarah Mohamed
• 10/29/2025

AWS has launched Amazon EBS Volume Clones, a new capability that lets users create point-in-time copies of EBS volumes instantly via the console, API or CLI.

The cloned volumes are fully accessible within seconds and operate with millisecond latency, AWS's Sébastien Stormacq said, eliminating the multi-step snapshot-restore workflow.

Volume Clones are ideal for development, testing and analytics environments that require immediate access to production data while maintaining operational independence. The copies are created within the same Availability Zone as the source, making it useful for setting up test environments with production data or curating temporary copies for developmental needs.

"I love that the copied volume is available immediately," Stormacq said. "I don't need to wait for its initialization to complete. During the initialization phase, my copied volume delivers performance based on the lowest of: a baseline of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s, the source volume's provisioned performance, or the copied volume's provisioned performance."

The launch supports AWS's ongoing push to simplify storage operations. Although not intended for long-term backup, the new feature complements EBS Snapshots, giving developers faster ways to replicate environments for CI/CD and database testing scenarios. Volume Cloning supports all EBS volume types and is available in all AWS commercial regions, selected local zones and in AWS GovCloud.