Master EBS, AMIs, Snapshots, and Copying

Today’s journey was focused on one of the core aspects of AWS EC2 storage and backup management — EBS volumes, AMI creation, snapshot handling, and cross-region replication. These concepts are essential when architecting fault-tolerant, scalable, and highly available cloud infrastructures.

☁️ What We Covered Today

Attaching and formatting EBS volumes
Mounting EBS volumes on EC2 instances
Setting up automatic mounting using /etc/fstab
Creating AMI (Amazon Machine Images) from instances
Taking EBS snapshots
Copying snapshots to different regions

🧱 Step-by-Step EBS + AMI + Snapshot Workflow

✅ 1. Launch EC2 Instance

OS: Amazon Linux 2
Type: t2.micro (Free Tier)
Allow SSH (port 22) in Security Group

SSH into the instance:

ssh -i "your-key.pem" ec2-user@<EC2-Public-IP>

✅ 2. Create and Attach EBS Volume

Navigate to EC2 > Elastic Block Store > Volumes:

Create new volume (e.g. 1 GiB, same AZ as instance)
After creation, click "Actions > Attach Volume"
Choose instance and attach as /dev/xvdf

✅ 3. Format and Mount EBS Volume

# Check for attached volume
lsblk

# Format the volume
sudo mkfs -t xfs /dev/xvdf

# Create a mount point
sudo mkdir /mnt/ebs-volume

# Mount the volume
sudo mount /dev/xvdf /mnt/ebs-volume

# Verify
df -h

✅ 4. Make Mount Persistent (Re-Mount on Reboot)

Get UUID of device:

sudo blkid /dev/xvdf

Edit fstab:

sudo vim /etc/fstab

Add this line (replace UUID appropriately):

UUID=<your-uuid> /mnt/ebs-volume xfs defaults,nofail 0 2

Test fstab:

sudo mount -a

📸 5. Create AMI from EC2 Instance

This captures your full instance state for reuse or backup:

Go to EC2 > Instances
Select instance > Actions > Image and templates > Create image
Provide a name and description
Click "Create Image"

View AMIs under: EC2 > AMIs

You can now launch identical EC2 instances from this image.

💾 6. Take EBS Snapshot

To back up a volume:

Go to EC2 > Volumes
Select the volume > Actions > Create Snapshot
Provide a name and description

Find it under: EC2 > Snapshots

🌍 7. Copy Snapshot to Another Region

Enable cross-region backup/disaster recovery:

Go to EC2 > Snapshots
Select snapshot > Actions > Copy Snapshot
Choose destination region
Enable encryption (optional)
Click Copy

Now, the snapshot is replicated and can be used to launch volumes in another region.

🧠 Best Practices

Use snapshots to regularly back up important data
Automate snapshot lifecycle using AWS Backup
Use AMIs to quickly replicate infrastructure
Store backups in a different region for redundancy

📅 What’s Next?

Tomorrow is Day 25 → we’ll dive into Load Balancing and Auto Scaling — essential topics for building scalable, fault-tolerant cloud-native applications.

Stay tuned and follow along as we grow our cloud skills every day. ☁️

#AWS #EBS #EC2 #Snapshots #CrossRegion #AMI #Cloud #DevOps #90DaysOfCloud

Day 24 of #90DaysOfCloud: Mastering EBS Volumes, AMIs, Snapshots, and Cross-Region Copying

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