Support for Elastic Block Store (EBS) for Amazon
InstallAnywhere 2021
When you launch an Amazon EC2 instance, the root device volume contains the image used to boot the instance. Amazon EC2 provides you with several data storage options for your instances. There are mainly two types of root device storage backed instances: instance store backed instances and EBS backed instances.
Amazon EC2 Instance Store Backed Instances
Instance store backed instances are temporary block level storage volumes (also known as instance stores) that are used by Amazon EC2 instances. If the root device is an instance store volume that was created from a template stored in Amazon S3, any Amazon EC2 instances that are launched from this AMI are known as instance store backed instances.
An instance store is dedicated to a particular instance and the data on it persists only during the lifetime of its associated EC2 instance. Data on such instance store volumes is lost when the instances are stopped, fail, or are terminated and cannot be restored. Therefore, such instance store backed instances should be used for temporary storage of information or content.
Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) are reliable block level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes are highly available and reliable storage volumes that can be attached to any running instance in the same availability zone. If the root device is an Amazon EBS volume created from an Amazon EBS snapshot, then instances launched from such AMIs are known to as EBS backed instances.
EBS volumes attached to an instance persist independently from the life of the instance and are recommended when data changes frequently and requires long term persistence. Amazon EBS volumes provides certain key features like data availability across availability zones, data persistence independent of the instance life, snapshots and incremental backups.
EBS volumes remain attached throughout the stop-start life of an instance, and are automatically detached when the instance terminates, with the data left intact. The data persists on the volume until it is explicitly deleted.
Elastic Block Store Backed Settings on the Appliance Configuration Tab
You can specify that your Amazon virtual appliance will be an EBS backed instance by making selections on the Appliance Configuration tab of the Build Appliances view on the Build page.
When the Deploy this Appliance check box is selected and the Root Device Type is set to Elastic block store backed, the following EBS backed settings must also be specified:
| • | EBS Volume size (GiB)—Specify the size in gigabytes of your EBS volume. The limit is up to 1 TiB depending on your AWS account limits. |
| • | Device—Enter the name of the root device that the volumes will be attached to. |
| • | Image Name—Enter the name of the EBS backed image created from the EBS snapshot. |
Note:For more information on Amazon Elastic Block Store and the Amazon EC2 Instance Store, see the following:
| • | http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AmazonEBS.html |
| • | http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html |