My client has an Amazon EC2 instance with instance type m1.medium. Now he wants to change the instance type to reduce costs. I found that t2.micro is more cost effective and suitable for the projects that run under it. In order to change the instance type, I stopped the instance from the AWS Console, then I tried to change it from Action>Instance Settings>Change Instance Type. But there is no option in the dropdown for t2.micro. I know that m1.medium is the previous generation instance type and that t2.micro is latest generation. Is that why it's not showing up? How can I solve this?
m1.medium (and m1 family) supports only paravirtual AMIs. t2 family on the other hand supports only HVM AMI. That is more likely the reason why it does not allow to change the instance type.
Refer to the section "Compatibility for Resizing Instances" at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-resize.html
Related
I want to change the instance type of an aws ec2 instance based on the cpu utilization of the instance. Basically i want the instance type to be t3.large if the cpu utilization is > 80% and t3.medium if it is below that. Is there any way to achieve this without any downtime? Can i achieve this with aws cloudformation? If so can you provide me a guide or link which i can refer to?
Unfortunately, you can't do this. Changing instance type requires stopping your instance:
You must stop your Amazon EBS–backed instance before you can change its instance type.
However, you could setup your instance(s) to operate in an autoscaling group. This way you could use UpdatePolicy to perform rolling or replacing update. This could be use to ensure that part or full fleet of your instances is operating while the new instance types are rolled out.
When I launch the instance, it automatically comes with a 30GB "C: Drive" and some "Ephemeral" drives.
My question is
"...where is the expected 410GB hard drive?"
I noticed you can change the default 30GB to be some other size.
Is this where one can increase to up to 410GB?
Instance storage is not enabled by default:
Instances that use Amazon EBS for the root device do not, by default,
have instance store available at boot time. Also, you can't attach
instance store volumes after you've launched an instance. Therefore,
if you want your Amazon EBS-backed instance to use instance store
volumes, you must specify them using a block device mapping when you
create your AMI or launch your instance.
You will find this quote and more info about how to enable it in the AWS-EC2 User Guide. See the section "Making Instance Stores Available on Your Instances".
I have a Windows 2008 EC2 instance to which I have done some customizing on the EBS boot drive.
I started the instance as m1.small (or m1.large) and the instance storage does not appear as an additional drive.
I've read that the -b switch in the ec2-run-instances command allows you to create mappings for the ephymeral instance storage. The ec2-run-instances command creates a new instance, however, in my case, the instance already exists and therefore I start it as ec2-start-instances, which does not have a -b switch for ephymeral instance storage.
Is there any way I can get to the ephymeral instance storage that comes with an m1.small instance for my existing EBS-booted instance?
UPDATE: It seems that nowadays (Feb 2015) Windows machines mount ephymeral instance storage in the Z: drive.
I'm afraid this functionality isn't available (yet) for Amazon EC2, but it's a very good question in fact - the common answer used to refer to the explicated launch time requirement, see e.g. ec2-modify-instance-attribute:
Note
If you want to add ephemeral storage to an Amazon EBS-backed instance,
you must add the ephemeral storage at the time you launch the
instance. For more information, go to Overriding the AMI's Block
Device Mapping in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide, or to
Adding A Default Instance Store in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
User Guide. [emphasis mine]
That hasn't been that much of an issue in the past, but given the recent introduction of 64-bit ubiquity implies a significant improvement of vertical scaling versatility (see EC2 Updates: New Medium Instance, 64-bit Ubiquity, SSH Client), this is suddenly a topic indeed - your question yields even more questions in turn:
What happens for the converse case, i.e. when I start a sufficiently large instance with lots of ephemeral storage and scale it down (and possibly up again) thereafter?
In case the initial block device mapping is retained somehow, should we always start with a large instance therefore? (I actually doubt that this is the case though.)
This question can only be addressed by the AWS team I guess, so you may want to file a support request or relay the question to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud forum at least.
I think what you're asking (but correct me if I'm wrong) is "how do I add additional storage to an EC2 instance?".
In which case, the answer is:
Select the Volumes panel in the AWS console and create a new volume of the size you want, making sure it's in the same Availability Zone as the instance you want to attach it to. Then select that new Volume, and click 'Attach' - select the instance you want to attach it to, and click OK.
Now log-on to the instance, and in Computer Management select the Disk Management plugin, format the new unassigned partition, and give it whatever drive letter you wish. It will then show up in Explorer as a standard Windows drive.
I know it is a newbie question but the documentation is really not clear about that.
I have successfully launched a Cluster Instances Amazon Linux AMI 2011.02.1 cc1.4xlarge instance. I need to upload and process a 15 GB text file and I don't know how to activate the "additional" storage.
By default, I have just 8 GB of storage. Can someone help me writing simple and clear instruction on how to activate all the storage (1690 GB) I should have?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Regards,
Eugenio
You should be able to mount your ephemeral drives by following this guide.
Cheers.
It's a very common question and there's a large confusion that everyone has around this when starting to work with AWS EC2.
There are 2 things to have in mind here :
Instance Type
AMI (Amazon Machine Image, basically a disk snapshot with some operating system)
Each AMI has some requirements that will dictate parts of the configuration of your created instance.
Here we're concerned with the Root Device type of an AMI :
EBS-backed AMI
These AMI's only work on instances that have an EBS volume attached. And therefore if you choose an EBS-backed AMI, the wizard will by default add an EBS volume (usually of size 8 GiB) without you noticing, and you'll be charged for this EBS separately in addition to the EC2 hourly charge. In this case when you ssh to your instance you will only find 8 GiBs of storage and not the large storage you're promised when you view the EC2 Pricing table at https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/ . And that is confusing.
If you also want to use your -usually large- instance store with these AMIs, then when you create that instance you have to explicitly add a volume and select Instance Store 0 from Volume Type (in Step 4 - Add Storage). You may have more than 1 drives assigned to your instance type, you need to add all of them in this case (Instance Store 0,1,..etc). These volumes can only be added at creation time. If the volumes were automatically mounted then you'll find them at /media/ephemral*, if not, you'll have to mount them manually.
Instance-Store-backed AMI
Those images use the Instance Storage as their root device (the OS will be installed on the instance store at / ). I think the confusion comes from the fact that these AMI's are not instantly viewable in the Quick Start tab of Step 1 at which you choose the AMI. All AMIs in the Quick Start tab are EBS-backed, and Instance Store AMIs are very uncommon these days, everyone uses EBS-backed AMIs because of their various speed and persistence benefits, and that's recommended by Amazon as well.
If you want an instance-store-backed AMI to avoid dealing with any EBS whatsoever, then in Step 1, choose the tab Community AMIs, and filter them by Root Device Type = Instance Store, then choose your AMI. Whether or not you add Instance Store 0 in Step 4 - Add Storage, the instance store will be available.
Check what Amazon Linux AMI type you're launching the image as. In my experience, if you launch with the "EBS-backed" AMI type, it won't mount the ephemeral storage. If you switch to the "Instance Store" type, it will mount it for you at /media/ephemeral0
http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/
I understand that when I launch an instance on ec2, that the instance has to be located on a particular data center, and that after launching you can't change that. I also understand that an AMI is created from an instance.
But what I dont understand, is when I launch an instance from an AMI, why can't I specify what region I want it to run on? Seems like it shouldnt matter, once the AMI is created you should be able to launch it in any region. What does the AMI contain that ties it to a region and why?
Kernels. The kernel IDs change across regions (don't ask me why).
Meaning an AMI which specifies a kernel ID to be booted with can only be booted in the region this kernel ID exists.
AMI is region specific because AMI basically contains a software configuration (for example, an operating system, an application server, and applications). From an AMI, you launch an instance, which is a copy of the AMI running as a virtual server in the cloud. And if we consider AMI a global service, it means all AMIs are stored in one place and have access to all regions. For this, it will take more time to pull and then create instances. So if it is available in a region(region-specific), then we can quickly launch instances fast without time delay.