Working with Amazon EBS

Lab overview
Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) is a scalable, high-performance block-
storage service that is designed for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). In
this lab, you learn how to create an EBS volume and perform operations on it, such
as attaching it to an instance, creating a file system, and taking a snapshot
backup.

Schematic diagram showing an EC2 instance with an attached EBS volume and a
snapshot created from the EBS volume

Objectives
By the end of this lab, you will be able to do the following:

Create an EBS volume.

Attach and mount an EBS volume to an EC2 instance.

Create a snapshot of an EBS volume.

Create an EBS volume from a snapshot.

Duration
This lab requires approximately 45 minutes to complete.

Accessing the AWS Management Console

At the top of these instructions, choose Start Lab to launch your lab.

Tip: If you need more time to complete the lab, choose Start Lab again to restart
the timer for the environment.

The status of the lab resources is be displayed on the upper-left corner:

AWS indicates that AWS lab resources are currently being created.

AWS indicates that AWS lab resources are ready.

Wait for the lab to be ready before proceeding.

At the top of these instructions, choose AWS to open the AWS Management Console on
a new browser tab. The system automatically signs you in.

Tip: If a new browser tab does not open, a banner or icon at the top of your
browser will indicate that your browser is preventing the site from opening pop-up
windows. Choose the banner or icon, and choose Allow pop-ups.

Arrange the AWS Management Console so that it appears alongside these instructions.
Ideally, you should be able to see both browser tabs at the same time to follow the
lab steps.

Task 1: Creating a new EBS volume

In this task, you create and attach an EBS volume to a new EC2 instance.

On the AWS Management Console, in the Search bar, enter and choose EC2 to open the
EC2 Management Console.

In the left navigation pane, choose Instances.

An EC2 instance named Lab has already been launched for your lab.

Note the Availability Zone for the Lab instance. It looks similar to the following:
us-west-2a

Tip: You might have to scroll to the right to see the Availability Zone column.

In the left navigation pane, for Elastic Block Store, choose Volumes.

You see an existing (8 GiB) volume that the EC2 instance is using.

Choose Create volume, and configure the following options:

Volume type: Choose General Purpose SSD (gp2).

Size (GiB): Enter 1.

Note: You might be restricted from creating large volumes.

Availability Zone: Choose the same Availability Zone as your EC2 instance (which is
us-west-2a in this case).

In the Tags -optional section, choose Add tag, and configure the following options:

Key: Enter Name.

Value: Enter My Volume.

Choose Create volume.

A new volume appears with the status of Creating in the Volume state column. This
status soon changes to Available. You might need to choose Refresh to see your new
volume.

Tip: You might have to scroll to the right to see the Volume state column.

Task 2: Attaching the volume to an EC2 instance

You now attach your new volume to an EC2 instance.

Select My Volume.

From the Actions menu, choose Attach volume.

From the Instance dropdown list, choose the Lab instance.

The Device name field is set to /dev/sdf. Commands that you run later in this lab
include this device identifier.

Choose Attach volume.

The Volume state of your new volume is now In-use.

Task 3: Connecting to the Lab EC2 instance
In this task, you use EC2 Instance Connect to connect to the Lab EC2 instance.

On the AWS Management Console, in the Search bar, enter and choose EC2 to open the
EC2 Management Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

From the list of instances, select the Lab instance.

Choose Connect.

On the EC2 Instance Connect tab, choose Connect.

This option opens a new browser tab with the EC2 Instance Connect terminal window.

Note: If you prefer to use an SSH client to connect to the EC2 instance, see the
guidance to Connect to Your Linux Instance.

You use this terminal window to complete the tasks throughout the lab. If the
terminal becomes unresponsive, refresh the browser or use the steps in this task to
connect again.

Task 4: Creating and configuring the file system

In this task, you add the new volume to a Linux instance as an ext3 file system
under the /mnt/data-store mount point.

To view the storage that is available on your instance, in the EC2 Instance Connect
terminal, run the following command:

df -h
You should see output similar to the following:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

devtmpfs 488M 60K 488M 1% /dev
tmpfs 497M 0 497M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/xvda1 7.8G 982M 6.7G 13% /
These results show the original 8 GB disk volume. Your new volume is not yet shown.

To create an ext3 file system on the new volume, run the following command:

sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdf

To create a directory to mount the new storage volume, run the following command:

sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store

To mount the new volume, run the following command:

sudo mount /dev/sdf /mnt/data-store

echo "/dev/sdf /mnt/data-store ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2" | sudo tee -a
/etc/fstab
The last line in this command ensures that the volume is mounted even after the
instance is restarted.

To view the configuration file to see the setting on the last line, run the
following command:

cat /etc/fstab
To view the available storage again, run the following command:

df -h
The output now contains an additional line similar to the following: /dev/xvdf

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

devtmpfs 488M 60K 488M 1% /dev
tmpfs 497M 0 497M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/xvda1 7.8G 982M 6.7G 13% /
/dev/xvdf 976M 1.3M 924M 1% /mnt/data-store
To create a file and add some text on the mounted volume, run the following
command:

sudo sh -c "echo some text has been written > /mnt/data-store/file.txt"

To verify that the text has been written to your volume, run the following command:

cat /mnt/data-store/file.txt
The output displays the text that this command copies to the file.

Task 5: Creating an Amazon EBS snapshot

In this task, you create a snapshot of your EBS volume.

Amazon EBS snapshots are stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for
durability. New EBS volumes can be created out of snapshots for cloning or
restoring backups. Amazon EBS snapshots can also be shared among Amazon Web
Services (AWS) accounts or copied over AWS Regions.

On the EC2 Management Console, choose Volumes, and select My Volume.

From the Actions menu, choose Create snapshot.

In the Tags section, choose Add tag, and then configure the following options:

Key: Enter Name.

Value: Enter My Snapshot.

Choose Create snapshot.

In the left navigation pane, choose Snapshots.

The Snapshot status of your snapshot is Pending. After completion, the status
changes to Completed. Only used storage blocks are copied to snapshots, so empty
blocks do not use any snapshot storage space.

In your EC2 Instance Connect terminal window, to delete the file that you created
on your volume, run the following command:

sudo rm /mnt/data-store/file.txt
Note: If terminal is unresponsive, refresh the browser or reconnect as needed.

To verify that the file has been deleted, run the following command:

ls /mnt/data-store/file.txt
The following message displays: ls: cannot access /mnt/data-store/file.txt: No such
file or directory

Your file has been deleted.

Task 6: Restoring the Amazon EBS snapshot

If you need to retrieve data stored in a snapshot, you can restore the snapshot to
a new EBS volume.

Task 6.1: Creating a volume by using the snapshot

On the EC2 Management Console, select My Snapshot.

From the Actions menu, choose Create volume from snapshot.

For Availability Zone, choose the same Availability Zone that you used earlier.

In the Tags - optional section, choose Add tag, and then configure the following
options:

Key: Enter Name.

Value: Enter Restored Volume.

Choose Create volume.

To see your new volume, in the left navigation, choose Volumes.

The Volume status of your new volume is Available.

When restoring a snapshot to a new volume, you can also modify the configuration,
such as changing the volume type, size, or Availability Zone.

Task 6.2: Attaching the restored volume to the EC2 instance

Select Restored Volume.

From the Actions menu, choose Attach volume.

From the Instance dropdown list, choose the Lab instance.

The Device name field is set to /dev/sdg. You use this device identifier in a later
task.

Choose Attach volume.

The Volume status of your volume is now In-use.

Task 6.3: Mounting the restored volume

To create a directory for mounting the new storage volume, in the EC2 Instance
Connect terminal, run the following command:

sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store2

To mount the new volume, run the following command:

sudo mount /dev/sdg /mnt/data-store2

To verify that the volume that you mounted has the file that you created earlier,
run the following command:
ls /mnt/data-store2/file.txt
You should see the file.txt file.

Conclusion
Congratulations! You now have successfully done the following:

Created an EBS volume

Attached and mounted an EBS volume to an EC2 instance

Created a snapshot of an EBS volume

Created an EBS volume from a snapshot

Lab complete
Congratulations! You have completed the lab.

At the top of this page, choose End Lab and then choose Yes to confirm that you
want to end the lab.

A panel appears indicating that "Ended AWS Lab Successfully."