Welcome to this live AWS learning activity, where you will be changing the size of root EBS volumes on EC2 instances.
This activity provides hands-on experience resizing volumes in:
1) Standalone instances (a bastion host)
2) Auto scaling groups (two web server instances)
There are different reasons for a system administrator to have to resize a root volume. Needing larger storage capacity is the most obvious, but resizing is also necessary to increase the base IOPS of a volume. In this case, the volume may not be running low on storage space.
Good luck and enjoy the learning activity!
Learning Objectives
Successfully complete this lab by achieving the following learning objectives:
- Create an EBS Snapshot
Create an EBS snapshot from one of the existing EC2 instance volumes.
- Find the root volume of the bastion host
- Check the box beside it on the Volumes page
- Click Actions
- Choose Create Snapshot
- Add a description, then click Create Snapshot
- Click Close
- Create a New (Larger) EBS Volume
Using the snapshot you just created, provision a new EBS volume from the snapshot that provides a higher amount of IOPS.
- Check the box beside your new snapshot
- Click Actions
- Choose Create Volume
- Change size to 40 GB
- Click Create Volume
- Click Close
- Attach the (Larger) EBS Volume to an EC2 Instance
Replace an existing (root) EBS volume that is attached to an EC2 instance with the new (larger) EBS volume that you just created. The new volume needs to replace the old volume as the root volume.
- Stop the bastion host
- On the Volumes page, check the box beside the 8GB volume attached to the bastion host
- Click Actions, then choose Detach Volume
- Check the box next to the new larger volume
- Click Actions, then choose Attach Volume
- Choose the stopped bastion host for instance
- Device should be
/dev/xvda - Click Attach
- Create a New Auto Scaling Launch Configuration and Update the Existing Auto Sscaling Group
Create a new Auto Scaling launch configuration that uses the new (larger) EBS volume for created instances. Then, update the existing Auto Scaling group to use the new launch configuration.
- Copy the user data from the existing launch configuration
- Click Create a Launch Configuration
- Click Select beside Amazon Linux to select the AMI
- Leave t2.micro chosen, then click Next: Configure details
- Add a Name
- Click Advanced Details, copy in the user data from the orginal launch configuration
- Change IP Address Type to Do not assign…
- Click Next: Add storage
- Change the volume size to 40GB, then click Next: Configure Security Group
- Choose the existing WebServerSecurityGroup
- Click Review, then click Create launch configuration
- Choose to Proceed without a key pair
- Click Close
- Navigate to the Auto Scaling Groups page
- Edit the existing Auto Scaling group to use the new launch configuration
- Terminate the WordPress instances one at a time to update the volume size
