Comments on: Automounting Amazon EBS volumes on EC2 instances

By: carson

carson — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:03:28 +0000

It can probably be done through the API but I'm not sure if it is worth it. You could also probably look to see if the device is available in a loop.

By: David

David — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 10:38:26 +0000

Good stuff!

I have checked that an attached volume state transitions from "available" to "in-use", but when in that state… isn't there any other way of confirming that the volume can safely used (for formatting it, for using it with mdadm or whatever), instead of waiting 20 seconds?

Regards,
David

By: Symphonious » RightScale AWS Amazon EC2 Library for Ruby

Symphonious » RightScale AWS Amazon EC2 Library for Ruby — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:35:50 +0000

[...] lazy to actually look into it in detail and never really needed to. However, I’ve stumbled across instructions for auto-mounting an EBS volume which turns out to be very handy, and leads on to the particularly awesome right_aws ruby [...]

By: carson

carson — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:09:21 +0000

I don't think they have an auto-attach yet.

I think you could get around rebuilding the AMI by passing the data you need in as a parameter when you launch the instance. The entire solution isn't ideal but until they provide something better it is probably the only way to take care of it.

Some other issues I have seen and read about are that sometimes the EBS volumes get stuck in a mounted state and can't be remounted until they are forced to release. That kind of tosses a wrench into the mix too but again there isn't a lot that can be done about it. Over time I'm sure Amazon will work out those kinks.

By: James Little

James Little — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:07:27 +0000

Thanks for the script Carson. Do you know if Amazon created an auto-attach method yet? A quick Google and look over the API docs suggests not.

Also, there doesn't seem to be a way of programmatically grabbing the Volume ID. So if your EBS volume dies and you have to re-create from a snapshot, the ID changes and you have to edit your script and possibly rebuild your whole AMI; a far from ideal solution :(

Anyway, thanks again!

James