Amazon EC2 - Mounting a EBS drive

This post applies to

• mounting a new EBS volume
• mounting an existing EBS volume or snapshot

Specs:

• Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS 64-bit
• XFS

1.) Creating a EBS volume (skip this if you have a volume already)

• Login to your Amazon EC2 Admin Console
• In the left sidebar menu, expand Elastic Block Volume and click on Volumes
• Click on Create Volume
• Specify a size (Ex. 8 Gib)
• Set Availability Zone to the region that your instance is in (Note that it is very important that the EBS and the instance are in the same region.)
• Click "Yes, Create"
• Wait till the console says the EBS is available (blue circle).

2.) Attaching a EBS volume to an instance

• Right click on a EBS volume
• Click Attach Volume
• Select your instance (If you want to launch a new instance, check the post - Amazon EC2 - Launching Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS step by step guide)
• If the volume says "attaching" for a long time (ex. 10 mins), check this post - EBS hangs in "attaching" mode forever (will not attach) without errormsg.

3.) Mounting the EBS volume

ssh into your instance  (ex. ssh -i {key} {user}@{ec2_address})


sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y


Check if the drive is available by

sudo fdisk -l

Sample output:

Disk /dev/xvdf: 8589 MB, 8589934592 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1044 cylinders, total 16777216 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000 

Disk /dev/xvdf doesn't contain a valid partition table

Install xfs tools.

sudo apt-get install -y xfsprogs xfs

sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/xvdf 

Add the new volume to the file system configuration file.

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Add the following to the end of the file.

/dev/xvdf /vol xfs noatime 0 0

Save the file.

/vol is the mount point for the partition /dev/xvdf.

Note that xvd[f-p] are partitions for EBS. You can choose which letter to use when creating the EBS in the EC2 admin console.


sudo mkdir -m 000 /vol

sudo mount /vol

cd into /vol to see if it's accessible.