School of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Course : B. Tech Type : Specialization Core

Course Code : 22CS142 Course Name : Introduction to Cloud Computing (ICC)
Year : 2024-2025 Semester : Odd
Date : Sept 2024 Batch :ALL

Lab Experiment– 3

Lab Overview

This lab focuses on Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), a key underlying storage
mechanism for Amazon EC2 instances. In this lab, you will learn how to create an Amazon
EBS volume, attach it to an instance, apply a file system to the volume, and then take a
snapshot backup.

Topics covered
By the end of this lab, you will be able to:

 Create an Amazon EBS volume

 Attach and mount your volume to an EC2 instance
 Create a snapshot of your volume
 Create a new volume from your snapshot
 Attach and mount the new volume to your EC2 instance

AWS service restrictions

In this lab environment, access to AWS services and service actions might be restricted to the
ones that are needed to complete the lab instructions. You might encounter errors if you
attempt to access other services or perform actions beyond the ones that are described in this
lab.

What is Amazon Elastic Block Store?

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) offers persistent storage for Amazon EC2
instances. Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached and persist independently from the
life of an instance. Amazon EBS volumes are highly available, highly reliable volumes that
can be leveraged as an Amazon EC2 instances boot partition or attached to a running
Amazon EC2 instance as a standard block device.
When used as a boot partition, Amazon EC2 instances can be stopped and subsequently
restarted, enabling you to pay only for the storage resources used while maintaining your
instance's state. Amazon EBS volumes offer greatly improved durability over local Amazon
EC2 instance stores because Amazon EBS volumes are automatically replicated on the
backend (in a single Availability Zone).
For those wanting even more durability, Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-
time consistent snapshots of your volumes that are then stored in Amazon Simple Storage
Service (Amazon S3) and automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones. These
snapshots can be used as the starting point for new Amazon EBS volumes and can protect
your data for long-term durability. You can also easily share these snapshots with co-workers
and other AWS developers.
This lab guide explains basic concepts of Amazon EBS in a step-by-step fashion. However, it
can only give a brief overview of Amazon EBS concepts. For further information, see the
Amazon EBS documentation.

Amazon EBS Volume Features

Amazon EBS volumes deliver the following features:

 Persistent storage: Volume lifetime is independent of any particular Amazon EC2

instance.
 General purpose: Amazon EBS volumes are raw, unformatted block devices that can
be used from any operating system.
 High performance: Amazon EBS volumes are equal to or better than local Amazon
EC2 drives.
 High reliability: Amazon EBS volumes have built-in redundancy within an
Availability Zone.
 Designed for resiliency: The AFR (Annual Failure Rate) of Amazon EBS is between
0.1% and 1%.
 Variable size: Volume sizes range from 1 GB to 16 TB.
 Easy to use: Amazon EBS volumes can be easily created, attached, backed up,
restored, and deleted.

Accessing the AWS Management Console

1. At the top of these instructions, choose Start Lab.

o The lab session starts.
o A timer displays at the top of the page and shows the time remaining in the
session.

Tip: To refresh the session length at any time, choose Start Lab again before
the timer reaches 0:00.

o Before you continue, wait until the circle icon to the right of the AWS link in
the upper-left corner turns green.
 2. To connect to the AWS Management Console, choose the AWS link in the upper-left
corner.
o A new browser tab opens and connects you to the console.

Tip: If a new browser tab does not open, a banner or icon is usually at the top
of your browser with the message that your browser is preventing the site from
opening pop-up windows. Choose the banner or icon, and then choose Allow
pop-ups.

3. Arrange the AWS Management Console tab so that it displays along side these
instructions. Ideally, you will be able to see both browser tabs at the same time, to
make it easier to follow the lab steps.

Getting Credit for your work

At the end of this lab you will be instructed to submit the lab to receive a score based on your
progress.
Tip: The script that checks you works may only award points if you name resources and set
configurations as specified. In particular, values in these instructions that appear in This
Format should be entered exactly as documented (case-sensitive).

Task 1: Create a New EBS Volume

In this task, you will create and attach an Amazon EBS volume to a new Amazon EC2
instance.

4. In the AWS Management Console, in the search box next to Services , search for and
select EC2.
5. In the left navigation pane, choose Instances.

An Amazon EC2 instance named Lab has already been launched for your lab.

6. Note the Availability Zone of the instance. It will look similar to us-east-1a.
7. In the left navigation pane, choose Volumes.

You will see an existing volume that is being used by the Amazon EC2 instance. This
volume has a size of 8 GiB, which makes it easy to distinguish from the volume you
will create next, which will be 1 GiB in size.

8. Choose Create volume then configure:

o Volume Type: General Purpose SSD (gp2)
o Size (GiB): 1. NOTE: You may be restricted from creating large volumes.
o Availability Zone: Select the same availability zone as your EC2 instance.
o Choose Add tag
 oIn the Tag Editor, enter:
 Key: Name
 Value: My Volume
9. Choose Create Volume

Your new volume will appear in the list, and will move from the Creating state to the
Available state. You may need to choose refresh to see your new volume.

Task 2: Attach the Volume to an Instance

In this task you will attach the new EBS volume to the Amazon EC2 instance.

10. Select My Volume.

11. In the Actions menu, choose Attach volume.
12. Choose the Instance field, then select the Lab instance.

Note that the Device name is set to /dev/sdf. Notice also the message displayed that
"Newer Linux kernels may rename your devices to /dev/xvdf through /dev/xvdp
internally, even when the device name entered here (and shown in the details) is
/dev/sdf through /dev/sdp."

13. Choose Attach volume

The volume state is now In-use.

Task 3: Connect to Your Amazon EC2 Instance

In this task, you will connect to the EC2 instance using EC2 Instance Connect which provides
access to a terminal in the browser.

14. In the AWS Management Console, in the search box next to Services , search for and
select EC2.
15. Choose Instances.
16. Select the Lab instance, and then choose Connect.
17. On the EC2 Instance Connect tab, choose Connect.

An EC2 Instance Connect terminal session opens and displays a $ prompt.

Task 4: Create and Configure Your File System

In this task, you will add the new volume to a Linux instance as an ext3 file system under the
/mnt/data-store mount point.

18. View the storage available on your instance:

Run the following command:

df -h
 You should see output similar to:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

devtmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /dev
tmpfs 475M 0 475M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 190M 2.8M 188M 2% /run
/dev/xvda1 8.0G 1.6G 6.5G 20% /
tmpfs 475M 0 475M 0% /tmp
tmpfs 95M 0 95M 0% /run/user/1000

The output shows that the original 8GB /dev/xvda1 disk volume mounted at / which
indicates that it is the root volume. It hosts the Linux operating system of the EC2
instance.

The 1GB other volume that you attached to the Lab instance is not listed, because you
have not yet created a file system on it or mounted the disk. Those actions are
necessary so that Linux operating system can make use of the new storage space. You
will take those actions next.

19. Create an ext3 file system on the new volume:

sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdf

The output should indicate that a new file system was created on the attached volume.

20. Create a directory for mounting the new storage volume:

sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store

21. Mount the new volume:

sudo mount /dev/sdf /mnt/data-store

To configure the Linux instance to mount this volume whenever the instance is
started, you will need to add a line to /etc/fstab. Run the command below to
accomplish that:

echo "/dev/sdf /mnt/data-store ext3 defaults,noatime 1 2" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

22. View the configuration file to see the setting on the last line:

cat /etc/fstab

23. View the available storage again:

df -h

The output will look similar to what is shown below.

 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 484M 0 484M 0% /dev
tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 492M 460K 491M 1% /run
tmpfs 492M 0 492M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/xvda1 8.0G 1.5G 6.6G 19% /
tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/0
tmpfs 99M 0 99M 0% /run/user/1000
/dev/xvdf 976M 1.3M 924M 1% /mnt/data-store

Notice the last line. The output now lists /dev/xvdf which is the new mounted volume.

24. On your mounted volume, create a file and add some text to it.

sudo sh -c "echo some text has been written > /mnt/data-store/file.txt"

25. Verify that the text has been written to your volume.

cat /mnt/data-store/file.txt
Leave the EC2 Instance Connect session running. You will return to it later in this lab.

Task 5: Create an Amazon EBS Snapshot

In this task, you will create a snapshot of your EBS volume.

You can create any number of point-in-time, consistent snapshots from Amazon EBS
volumes at any time. Amazon EBS snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 with high durability.
New Amazon EBS volumes can be created out of snapshots for cloning or restoring backups.
Amazon EBS snapshots can also be easily shared among AWS users or copied over AWS
regions.

26. In the EC2 Console, choose Volumes and select My Volume.

27. In the Actions menu, select Create snapshot.
28. Choose Add tag then configure:
o Key: Name
o Value: My Snapshot
o Choose Create snapshot

29. In the left navigation pane, choose Snapshots.

Your snapshot is displayed. The status will first have a state of Pending, which means
that the snapshot is being created. It will then change to a state of Completed.

Note: Only used storage blocks are copied to snapshots, so empty blocks do not
occupy any snapshot storage space.

30. In your EC2 Instance Connect session, delete the file that you created on your
volume.
 sudo rm /mnt/data-store/file.txt

31. Verify that the file has been deleted.

ls /mnt/data-store/

Your file has been deleted.

Task 6: Restore the Amazon EBS Snapshot

If you ever wish to retrieve data stored in a snapshot, you can Restore the snapshot to a new
EBS volume.

Create a Volume Using Your Snapshot

32. In the EC2 console, select My Snapshot.

33. In the Actions menu, select Create volume from snapshot.
34. For Availability Zone, select the same availability zone that you used earlier.
35. Choose Add tag then configure:
o Key: Name
o Value: Restored Volume
o Choose Create volume

Note: When restoring a snapshot to a new volume, you can also modify the
configuration, such as changing the volume type, size or Availability Zone.

Attach the Restored Volume to Your EC2 Instance

36. In the left navigation pane, choose Volumes.

37. Select Restored Volume.
38. In the Actions menu, select Attach volume.
39. Choose the Instance field, then select the Lab instance that appears.

Note that the Device field is set to /dev/sdg. You will use this device identifier in a
later task.

40. Choose Attach volume

The volume state is now in-use.

Mount the Restored Volume

41. Create a directory for mounting the new storage volume:

sudo mkdir /mnt/data-store2

 42. Mount the new volume:

sudo mount /dev/sdg /mnt/data-store2

43. Verify that volume you mounted has the file that you created earlier.

ls /mnt/data-store2/

You should see file.txt.

Submitting your work

44. To record your progress, choose Submit at the top of these instructions.
45. When prompted, choose Yes.

After a couple of minutes, the grades panel appears and shows you how many points
you earned for each task. If the results don't display after a couple of minutes, choose
Grades at the top of these instructions.

Tip: You can submit your work multiple times. After you change your work, choose
Submit again. Your last submission is recorded for this lab.

46. To find detailed feedback about your work, choose Submission Report.

Tip: For any checks where you did not receive full points, there are sometimes
helpful details provided in the submission report.