It is rare to find a physical server with only one hard drive. However, default Amazon Web Services instances typically only have one virtual hard disk.
There is an easy way to add virtual hard drives to an AWS instance. Amazon Elastic Block Storage is the key to this.
EBS is block storage that can attach to AWS instances and be used as a virtual disk. EBS volumes can have a maximum size of 16TB.
It is important to note that an EBS disk cannot be attached to more than one instance at a given time. This means that EBS storage cannot be used as a Windows cluster shared volume. However, there is a workaround. However, multiple EBS disks can be connected to an AWS instance. It is quite common to use EBS disks for virtual RAID arrays. This can improve storage performance in AWS instances.
Volumes. You will likely see some EBS volumes, as shown in Figure 1. This is because AWS instances use EBS volume as virtual hard drives. When you create an instance, an EBS Volume is also created.
[Click on the image to see a larger view.] Figure 1: It is possible that you will find some EBS volumes. EBS volumes are used by default in AWS instances. This means that an EBS volume can also be used as a boot volume. It also means that EBS volumes and their contents can be retained even after a virtual machine is de-provisioned and retired.
It is easy to create an EBS volume. You will see a Create Volume button in Figure 1. Clicking this button will bring up the Create Volume window in the AWS console. Figure 2 shows the Create Volume window. It asks for some information.
Figure 2: You can configure multiple settings in the Create Volume dialog box. The volume type is the first thing you need to specify. This is where you will specify the type and type of underlying storage you wish to use. Figure 2 shows an example of a volume that is based on solid state storage.
Next, you will need to provide the volume size you wish to create. The volume size can range from 1GB to 16TB.
You will also need to specify the availability zone of the volume you are creating. This setting determines the physical location of the volume.
The snapshot ID is the second-to-last setting. If you are creating the volume from an existing snapshot, you don’t need to provide a snapshot ID.
The Encryption setting is the last setting in this dialog box. Figure 2 shows that this setting allows you use a simple checkbox in order to encrypt the volume.
Click the Create button to create the volume. Figure 3 shows the new volume and the previous volume.
[Click on the image to see a larger view.] Figure 3: The new volume is created. Figure 3 shows that the state of the volume is set to Available. This means that the volume has not yet been associated with an instance. To link the volume with an instance, right-click the volume and select the Attach Volume command from shortcut menu. The Attached Volume dialog box will be displayed. This dialog box will ask you to enter an instance ID. An instance can only be attached to a volume that is in the same availability area as the volume. You will also need to provide a device identification for the volume. To attach the volume to an instance, click the Attach button as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: To be able to access the device ID and an instance ID, you will need to enter them. The new volume will be created.