how to create an Amazon EBS volume, attach it to an instance, apply a file system to the volume, and then take a snapshot backup.
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) offers persistent storage for Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS volumes are highly available, highly reliable volumes that can be leveraged as an Amazon EC2 instances boot partition or attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance as a standard block device.
When used as a boot partition, Amazon EC2 instances can be stopped and subsequently restarted, enabling you to pay only for the storage resources used while maintaining your instance's state. Amazon EBS volumes offer greatly improved durability over local Amazon EC2 instance stores because Amazon EBS volumes are automatically replicated on the backend (in a single Availability Zone).
For those wanting even more durability, Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time consistent snapshots of your volumes that are then stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones. These snapshots can be used as the starting point for new Amazon EBS volumes and can protect your data for long-term durability. You can also easily share these snapshots with co-workers and other AWS developers.
This lab guide explains basic concepts of Amazon EBS in a step-by-step fashion. However, it can only give a brief overview of Amazon EBS concepts. For further information, see the Amazon EBS documentation.
Amazon EBS Volume Features Amazon EBS volumes deliver the following features:
Persistent storage: Volume lifetime is independent of any particular Amazon EC2 instance.
General purpose: Amazon EBS volumes are raw, unformatted block devices that can be used from any operating system.
High performance: Amazon EBS volumes are equal to or better than local Amazon EC2 drives.
High reliability: Amazon EBS volumes have built-in redundancy within an Availability Zone.
Designed for resiliency: The AFR (Annual Failure Rate) of Amazon EBS is between 0.1% and 1%.
Variable size: Volume sizes range from 1 GB to 16 TB.
Easy to use: Amazon EBS volumes can be easily created, attached, backed up, restored, and deleted.
In the AWS Management Console, on the Services menu, click EC2.
In the left navigation pane, choose Instances. ( Select the Ec2 instance you wish to attach the EBS) Note the Availability Zone of the instance. In the left navigation pane, choose Volumes.
You will see an existing volume that is being used by the Amazon EC2 instance. This volume has a size of 8 GiB, which makes it easy to distinguish from the volume you will create next, which will be 1 GiB in size.
Choose Create volume then configure:
Volume Type: General Purpose SSD (gp2)
Size (GiB): 1. NOTE: You may be restricted from creating large volumes.
Availability Zone: Select the same availability zone as your EC2 instance.
Choose Add Tag
In the Tag Editor, enter:
Key: Name
Value: My Volume
Choose Create Volume
Your new volume will appear in the list, and will move from the Creating state to the Available state. You may need to choose refresh to see your new volume.
You can now attach your new volume to the Amazon EC2 instance.
Select My Volume.
In the Actions menu, choose Attach volume.
Choose the Instance field, then select the instance that appears Note that the Device field is set to /dev/sdf. You will use this device identifier in a later task.
Choose Attach volume The volume state is now In-use.
These instructions are for Windows users only.
If you are using macOS or Linux, skip to the next section.
Read through the three bullet points in this step before you start to complete the actions, because you will not be able see these instructions when the Details panel is open.
Choose the Details drop down menu above these instructions you are currently reading, and then choose Show. A Credentials window will open.
Choose the Download PPK button and save the labsuser.ppk file. Typically your browser will save it to the Downloads directory.
Then exit the Details panel by choosing the X.
Download needed software.
You will use PuTTY to SSH to Amazon EC2 instances. If you do not have PuTTY installed on your computer, download it here.
Open putty.exe
Configure PuTTY to not timeout:
Choose Connection Set Seconds between keepalives to 30 This allows you to keep the PuTTY session open for a longer period of time.
Configure your PuTTY session:
Choose Session Host Name (or IP address): Paste the Public DNS or IPv4 address of the Lab instance that you noted earlier. Back in PuTTY, in the Connection list, expand SSH Choose Auth and expand Credentials Under Private key file for authentication: Choose Browse Browse to the labsuser.ppk file that you downloaded, select it, and choose Open Choose Open again To trust and connect to the host, choose Accept. When prompted login as, enter: ec2-user
This will connect you to the EC2 instance.
These instructions are for Mac/Linux users only. If you are a Windows user, skip ahead to the next task.
Read through all the instructions in this one step before you start to complete the actions, because you will not be able see these instructions when the Details panel is open.
Choose the Details drop down menu above these instructions you are currently reading, and then choose Show. A Credentials window will open.
Choose the Download button and save the labsuser.pem file.
Then exit the Details panel by choosing the X.
Open a terminal window, and change directory cd to the directory where the labsuser.pem file was downloaded.
For example, run this command, if it was saved to your Downloads directory:
cd ~/Downloads
Change the permissions on the key to be read only, by running this command:
chmod 400 labsuser.pem
Return to the AWS Management Console, and in the EC2 service, choose Instances.
The Lab instance should be selected.
In the Details tab, copy the Public IPv4 address value.
Return to the terminal window and run this command (replace with the actual public IP address you copied):
ssh -i labsuser.pem ec2-user@
Type yes when prompted to allow a first connection to this remote SSH server.
Because you are using a key pair for authentication, you will not be prompted for a password.
In this task, you will add the new volume to a Linux instance as an ext3 file system under the /mnt/data-store mount point.
If you are using PuTTY, you can paste text by right-clicking in the PuTTY window.
View the storage available on your instance:
df -h You should see output similar to:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 484M 0 484M 0% /dev tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 492M 460K 491M 1% /run tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/xvda1 8.0G 1.5G 6.6G 19% / tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/0 tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/1000 This is showing the original 8GB disk volume. Your new volume is not yet shown.
Create an ext3 file system on the new volume:
sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdf
Create a directory for mounting the new storage volume:
sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store
Mount the new volume:
sudo mount /dev/sdf /mnt/data-store To configure the Linux instance to mount this volume whenever the instance is started, you will need to add a line to /etc/fstab.
echo "/dev/sdf /mnt/data-store ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
View the configuration file to see the setting on the last line:
cat /etc/fstab
View the available storage again:
df -h The output will now contain an additional line - /dev/xvdf:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 484M 0 484M 0% /dev tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 492M 460K 491M 1% /run tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/xvda1 8.0G 1.5G 6.6G 19% / tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/0 tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/1000 /dev/xvdf 976M 1.3M 924M 1% /mnt/data-store
On your mounted volume, create a file and add some text to it.
sudo sh -c "echo some text has been written > /mnt/data-store/file.txt"
Verify that the text has been written to your volume.
cat /mnt/data-store/file.txt
You can create any number of point-in-time, consistent snapshots from Amazon EBS volumes at any time. Amazon EBS snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 with high durability. New Amazon EBS volumes can be created out of snapshots for cloning or restoring backups. Amazon EBS snapshots can also be easily shared among AWS users or copied over AWS regions.
In the AWS Management Console, choose Volumes and select My Volume.
In the Actions menu, select Create snapshot.
Choose Add tag then configure:
Key: Name Value: My Snapshot Choose Create snapshot
In the left navigation pane, choose Snapshots.
Your snapshot is displayed. The status will first have a state of Pending, which means that the snapshot is being created. It will then change to a state of Completed.
Note: Only used storage blocks are copied to snapshots, so empty blocks do not occupy any snapshot storage space.
In your remote SSH session, delete the file that you created on your volume.
sudo rm /mnt/data-store/file.txt
Verify that the file has been deleted.
ls /mnt/data-store/ Your file has been deleted.
If you ever wish to retrieve data stored in a snapshot, you can Restore the snapshot to a new EBS volume.
In the AWS Management Console, select My Snapshot.
In the Actions menu, select Create volume from snapshot.
For Availability Zone Select the same availability zone that you used earlier.
Choose Add tag then configure:
Key: Name Value: Restored Volume Choose Create volume Note: When restoring a snapshot to a new volume, you can also modify the configuration, such as changing the volume type, size or Availability Zone.
In the left navigation pane, choose Volumes.
Select Restored Volume.
In the Actions menu, select Attach volume.
Choose the Instance field, then select the (Lab) instance that appears.
Note that the Device field is set to /dev/sdg. You will use this device identifier in a later task.
Choose Attach volume
The volume state is now in-use.
Create a directory for mounting the new storage volume:
sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store2
Mount the new volume:
sudo mount /dev/sdg /mnt/data-store2
Verify that volume you mounted has the file that you created earlier.
ls /mnt/data-store2/
You should see file.txt.
Congratulations! You now have successfully:
Created an Amazon EBS volume
Attached the volume to an EC2 instance
Created a file system on the volume
Added a file to volume
Created a snapshot of your volume
Created a new volume from the snapshot
Attached and mounted the new volume to your EC2 instance
Verified that the file you created earlier was on the newly created volume.