Amazon Web Services has extended Amazon EBS Volume Clones so block storage volumes can be copied across AWS accounts, giving hosting and cloud operations teams a faster way to refresh isolated environments from production data.

The feature lets the owner of an EBS volume grant another AWS account access through AWS Resource Access Manager, then create a point-in-time copy in the target account. AWS says the target copy can also be re-encrypted with an AWS Key Management Service key controlled by the receiving account.

For site operators, the practical angle is account isolation. Many managed hosting, SaaS, and agency teams keep production, staging, disaster-recovery, and security-testing workloads in separate AWS accounts. Cross-account clones can reduce the operational friction of moving recent application data into those environments without first building a snapshot-sharing or manual copy workflow.

There are limits worth noting before teams add it to runbooks. AWS says volumes encrypted with a customer managed key can be shared, but volumes encrypted with the default AWS managed key cannot. If the source volume is encrypted with a customer managed key, that key must also be shared with the target account, although the resulting copy can be re-encrypted under a different key in the destination account.

AWS also notes that copy activity can be tracked through CloudTrail and EventBridge events, which matters for audit trails when production storage is shared outside its original account boundary. Pricing includes a one-time fee once a copy is initiated, plus normal charges for the copied EBS volume.

The update is most relevant to cloud hosting teams that already rely on AWS account separation as a security control. It does not remove the need to scrub sensitive production data before using it in development or test systems, but it gives operators a more native path for controlled cross-account storage replication.

Source: AWS News Blog