Persist MySQL on EBS Amazon EC2

The goal of this post is to move MySQL files to EBS volume so the data can persist.

Start by making the following folders on a mount point called "/vol".  "/vol" maps to a EBS volume.  (For instructions on how to mount a EBS volume, refer to the post - Amazon EC2 - Mounting a EBS drive)

sudo mkdir /vol/etc
sudo mkdir /vol/lib
sudo mkdir /vol/log

Move all the default MySQL folders/files to the above folders

sudo mv /etc/mysql     /vol/etc/
sudo mv /var/lib/mysql /vol/lib/
sudo mv /var/log/mysql /vol/log/

Point the MySQL paths to the EBS paths

sudo mkdir /etc/mysql
sudo mkdir /var/lib/mysql
sudo mkdir /var/log/mysql
sudo vi /etc/fstab 

Append "/vol/etc/mysql /etc/mysql none bind" to /etc/fstab
Append "/vol/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql none bind" to /etc/fstab
Append "/vol/log/mysql /var/log/mysql none bind" to /etc/fstab 

sudo mount /etc/mysql
sudo mount /var/lib/mysql
sudo mount /var/log/mysql

 The resulting /etc/fstab file should look similar to the following:

LABEL=cloudimg-rootfs   /        ext4   defaults        0 0
/dev/xvdb       /mnt    auto    defaults,nobootwait,comment=cloudconfig 0       2
/dev/xvda3      none    swap    sw,comment=cloudconfig  0       0
/dev/xvdf       /vol    xfs     noatime 0 0
/vol/etc/mysql /etc/mysql     none bind
/vol/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql none bind
/vol/log/mysql /var/log/mysql none bind

Start MySQL

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start 

Unmounting MySQL volume.

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo umount /etc/mysql
sudo umount /var/lib/mysql
sudo umount /var/log/mysql

 Handy command for checking the mount status

df -h