Automated backup of Amazon AWS EBS volumes onto EBS snapshots

Use an ubuntu server such as Amazon AMI: alestic-git-server-ubuntu-10.10-maverick-i386-20110322 (ami-1250a27b)

Find AWS accedd key id/secret under AWS web interface, My Account, Security Credentials

Create file [app name].sh with contents:
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
ec2-consistent-snapshot \
--aws-access-key-id XXXX \
--aws-secret-access-key XXXX \
--description "[app name] [directory path] $(date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') UTC" \
vol-XXXX

Schedule cron:
crontab -e
0 5 * * * /home/ubuntu/backup-[app name].sh

Reference:
http://alestic.com/2011/02/ec2-consistent-snapshot-sceencast
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1663
http://serverfault.com/questions/315930/why-cant-xfs-freeze-find-this-directory-when-called-with-ec2-consistent-snapsho

Other ideas here:
http://www.agileweboperations.com/poor-mans-automated-snapshots-for-ec2