Tag Archives: ebs

Introducing Amazon EBS Shared Snapshots

Leave a reply

Amazon AWS posted on their website that it is now possible to share EBS snapshot to multiple accounts.

“Amazon EBS shared snapshots make it easy for you to share this data with your co-workers or others in the AWS community. With this feature, users that you have authorized can quickly use your Amazon EBS shared snapshots as the basis for creating their own Amazon EBS volumes. If you choose, you can also make your data available publicly to all AWS users. Because all the data is stored in the AWS cloud, users don’t have to wait for time consuming downloads, and can access it within minutes. You can quickly start sharing your data through the AWS Management Console by visiting the Snapshots section in the Amazon EC2 tab, or by leveraging the API Tools.

Please visit our Amazon EBS detail page for additional information on Amazon EBS shared snapshots and Amazon EBS and see our developer documentation for more information on the new API calls.”

Click here for more info.


Enlarge Amazon EBS Volume

5 Replies

The easiest way enlarge an EBS volume is obviously by creating a snapshot ,create a new volume using that snapshot with a higher capacity. Unfortunately, once you mount the new EBS volume,you will notice that it’s size is the same. Below are the tips how to fix it.

If filesystem of the volume is EXT3:

I got a chance to create a snapshot of 200Gb EBS volume previously formatted using EXT3. After the snapshot which takes a little longer, need to create another 500GB volume from the snapshot because the older EBS about to be filled up with more data. Following steps posted by izyboyd found at:

Procedure to enlarge ext3 EBS volume from snapshot

Update: Commands for enalarging EXT3

 umount /mnt/ebs1 
# ElasticFox -> volumes -> right click -> create a new snapshot from this volume 
# ElasticFox -> snapshots -> right click -> create new volume from this snapshot (with increased size) 
# ElasticFox -> volumes -> right click ->; attach /dev/sdi 
fdisk /dev/sdi 
# Type 'd' to delete the primary partition 
# Type 'n' for new partition 
# Type 'p' for primary 
# Type '1' for 1st 
# Type Enter for 1st cylinder 
# Type Enter for last cylinder (full disk) 
# Partition is not bootable, so 'a' not necessary 
# Type 'w' to finish 
e2fsck -f /dev/sdi 
resize2fs -p /dev/sdi  
fsck -f -y /dev/sdi  
mount -t ext3 /dev/sdi  /mnt/ebs1

It’s was easy, though the time it takes to snapshot and wait for e2fsck command to finish takes sometime. I leave it overnight to finish the process. It’s important to do e2fsck to the new volume to ensure integrity of data.

If filesystem of the volume is XFS:

While EXT3 volume need to be unmounted while executing the resize, XFS is very simple and can be resize while it’s mounted and live using the command xfs_growfs.

The link of the post messages is at:
Increase XFS EBS volume size

Update: Commands for enlarging XFS 

 umount /mnt/ebs1 
# ElasticFox -> volumes -> right click -> create a new snapshot from this volume 
# ElasticFox -> snapshots-> right click -> create new volume from this snapshot (with increased size) 
# ElasticFox -> volumes -> right click -> attach /dev/sdi 
mount /dev/sdi /mnt/ebs1 
xfs_growfs /mnt/ebs1

Whether using EXT3 or XFS in the next volume in EC2, the links above are very helpful. Anybody have a chance snapshotting bigger than 500GB volume? How long does it takes for you to finish?