Why and when exactly should I use EC2 with S3?
I'm using EC2 to install tools like Gitlab and Rundeck. It works fine without S3 storage.
The problem is just if I terminate instances, I'll lose my files?
Short answer: Yes, you can use EC2 without S3. S3 is cloud storage and isn't used for EC2 images.
S3 is used for storing files, such as distributions, backups, and can even be used for static websites.
To answer the second part of your question: when creating storage for a new EC2 instance, uncheck the Delete on Termination, so it will be saved if you ever choose to terminate the EC2 instance.
Be careful though, I've had problems in the past where AWS will not let you reuse volumes that were used with a marketplace image.
EC2 uses EBS, not S3, for storing the volumes. (In fact, I don't exactly know how to make it use anything besides EBS. S3 is used for AMIs, which are basically templates that are copied to EBS when creating an instance.)
Option 1: Don't terminate your instances. Note that terminate means delete, not stop. You can stop them without terminating them.
Option 2: Configure your EBS volumes to not be deleted on termination. The volume will be detached rather than deleted. You can then attach it to another machine later.
You can also attach multiple EBS volumes to an instance, so if you want to save your data only but discard the OS, simply place your data on a secondary volume. The primary volume can be deleted and the secondary volume can be preserved. Delete-on-termination can be configured per-volume.
Related
I wanted to know is it possible to automate the creation of AMI in AWS without downtime and data loss, if possible how can we achieve it.
I have use system manager-> maintenance window in which i have set the reboot to true for data integrity, but i need a way so that the data is not lost.
Any help will be appreciated.
Thank-you.
Answering it as per comments discussion, question is somehow still vague to me
You have EBS right now. I'm not sure if your Instances are in Same AZ or not. If they are in same AZ then you can use EBS multi attach feature (available for IO volumes only) to share same storage with all of them.
Regarding backup you can choose EBS snapshots
Ideally my suggestion to you would be create a launch template, use EFS that can be mounted to multiple instances in same region, if you want it across regions then create mount targets. EFS is natively integrated with AWS backup.
Whenever any failover happens or your EC2 crashes for any reason and it goes less than your target capacity, auto scaling would automatically provision a new instance using launch template which would be using same EFS
but i need a way so that the data is not lost.
if you want to achieve this, then According to Docs, you need to ensure that application or os is not writing to ebs, which can be managed by either a script or a custom logic.
You can take a snapshot of an attached volume that is in use. However, snapshots only capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume at the time the snapshot command is issued. This might exclude any data that has been cached by any applications or the operating system. If you can pause any file writes to the volume long enough to take a snapshot, your snapshot should be complete. However, if you can't pause all file writes to the volume, you should unmount the volume from within the instance, issue the snapshot command, and then remount the volume to ensure a consistent and complete snapshot.
if you achieved the above then you can automate the creation, retention, and deletion of EBS snapshots and EBS-backed AMIs it using Data Lifecycle Manager
I haven't tried this but I think exporting VM to S3 and then automating the entire pipeline with Ec2 image builder should do the trick, you can customise your further images with build components
Refers importing and exporting vm's
Unfortunately there is not of box solution other than compromising data integrity but you can try above mentioned which can ensure data integrity and automation
We have an EC2 instance running in AWS EC2 instance. We have our ML algorithms and data that. We have also hosted a web-based interface also in that machine.
Now there are no new developments happening in that EC2 instance. We would like to terminate AWS subscription for a short period of time (for the purpose of cost-reduction and exploring new cloud services). Most importantly, we want to be in a position where we can purchase a new EC2 instance with a fresh AWS subscription, use the backup which we take now, and resume all operations (web-backend, SMS services for our app which is hosted in AWS, etc.).
What is the best way to do it? Is temporary termination of AWS subscription advisable?
There is no concept of an "AWS Subscription". AWS is charged on-demand, which means you only pay when you use resources.
If you temporarily do not want the Amazon EC2 instance, you could:
Stop the instance, which is like turning off the power. You will not be charged for the instance, but you will still pay for the disk storage attached to the instance. You can simply Start the instance again when you wish to use it. You will only be charged while the instance is running. OR
Create an image of the instance, then terminate the instance. This will create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), which contains a copy of the disks. You can then launch a new Amazon EC2 instance from the AMI when you wish to use it again. This is a lower-cost option compared to simply stopping the instance, but it takes more effort to stop/start.
It is quite common for companies to stop Amazon EC2 instances at night or over the weekend to reduce costs while they are not needed.
EDIT: Just thought of a third option. Will test it and be back. Not worth it; it would involve creating an image from the EC2 instance and then convert that image to a VM image, storing the VM image in S3. There may be some advantages to this, but I do not see them.
I think you have two options, both of them very reasonably priced. If you can separate the data from the operating system, then your best option would be to use an S3 bucket as a file system within the EC2 instance. Your EC2 instance would use this bucket to store all your "ML algorithms and data" and, possibly, even your "web-based interface". Whenever you decide that you no longer need the processing capacity of the EC2, you would unmount the S3 bucket file system from the EC2 instance and terminate that instance. After configuring an appropriate lifecycle rule for the S3 bucket, it would transition to Glacier, or even Glacier Deep Archive [you must considerer the different options of long term storage]. In the future, whenever you want to work with your data again, you would move your data from Glacier back to S3, create a new EC2 instance, install your applications, mount your S3 bucket as a file system and you would have access to all your data. I think this is your least expensive and shortest recovery time objective option. To implement this option, look at my answer to this question; everything you need to use an S3 bucket as a regular folder inside the EC2 instance is there.
The second option provides an integrated solution, meaning the operating system and the data stay together, and allows you to restore everything as it was the day you stopped processing your data. It's made up of the following cycle:
Shutdown your EC2 and make a note of all the specs [you need them further down].
Export your instance to a virtual image, vmdk for example, and store it in your S3 bucket. Something like this:
aws ec2 create-instance-export-task --instance-id i-0d54b0682aa3998a0
--target-environment vmware --export-to-s3-task DiskImageFormat=VMDK,ContainerFormat=ova,S3Bucket=sm-vm-backup,S3Prefix=vms
Configure an appropriate lifecycle rule for the S3 bucket so that it transitions to Glacier, or even Glacier Deep Archive.
Terminate the EC2 instance.
In the future you will need to implement the inverse, so you will need to restore the archived S3 Object [make sure you you can live with the time needed by AWS to do this]
Import the virtual image as an EC2 AMI, something like this [this is not complete - you will need some more options that you saved above]:
aws ec2 import-image --disk-containers
Format=ova,UserBucket="{S3Bucket=sm-vm-backup,S3Key=vmsexport-i-0a1c382e740f8b0ee.ova}"
Create an EC2 instance based on the image and you're back in business.
Obviously you should do some trial runs and even automate the entire process if it's something that will be done frequently. I have a feeling, based on what you said, that the first option is a better option, provided you can easily install whatever applications they use.
I'm assuming that you launched an EC2 instance from a base Amazon Machine Image and then added your own software and models to it. As opposed to launched an EC2 instance from an AWS Marketplace offering.
The simplest thing to do is to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) from your running EC2 instance. That will capture the current state of the instance and persist it in your AWS account. Then you can terminate the instance. Later, when you want to recreate it, launch a new instance, selecting the saved AMI instead of a standard AMI.
An alternative is to avoid the need to capture machine state at all, by using standard DevOps practices to revision-control everything you need to recreate the state of a running machine.
Note that there are costs associated with an AMI, though they are minimal ($0.05 per GB-month of data stored, for example).
I had contacted AWS customer care regarding this issue. Given below is the response I received. Please add your comments on which option might be good for me.
Note: I acknowledge the AWS customer care team for their help.
I understand that you require some information on cost saving for your
Instance since you will not be utilizing the service for a while.
To assist you with this I would recommend checking out the Instance
Stop/Start link here:
==>https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Stop_Start.html .
When you stop an Instance, you do not lose any data & you are not
charged for the resources any further. However please keep in mind
that you will still be charged for any EBS Storage Volumes attached to
the stopped Instance(s).
I also recommend checking out the below links on how you can reduce
your costs.
==>https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/reduce-aws-bill/
==>https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/10-things-you-can-do-today-to-reduce-aws-costs/
That being said, please note that as I am in the billing department,
for the best assistance with the various plans you will require the
assistance of our Sales Team.
The Sales Team will be able to assist with ways to save while
maintaining your configurations.
You will be able to reach the Sales Team here:
==>https://aws.amazon.com/websites/contact-us/.
Once you have completed the details in the link, a member of the team
will be in touch with you at their soonest.
i m running ec2 instance in 1 region i want to create snapshots of ec2 instances in other region directly without coping and cross region replication in s3, is this possible? if possible then how?
Amazon EBS Snapshots are created in the same region as the original EBS Volume. They can then be used to create a new Volume within the same Region.
If you wish to use an Amazon EBS Snapshot in a different region, the snapshot must first be copied to the other Region. This can done via the Amazon EC2 management console, the AWS Command-Line Interface (CLI) aws ec2 copy-snapshot command, or an AWS API call.
Please note that snapshots are incremental backups. The first snapshot isn't really a full backup. Rather, every snapshot simply copies any blocks that have been modified since any previous snapshot. Blocks are retained while snapshots still require the blocks. This means that blocks made during the initial snapshot could actually be deleted if they are not required by any active snapshots. This is why I say they are not the same as a full backup, which traditionally never has content deleted.
However, when a snapshot is copied to a new region it is copied in full, rather than incrementally.
If you do not with to copy an EBS snapshot between regions, you would need to find a different way to transfer the disk volume (eg filesystem-level synchronisation).
In fact, there should typically be no need to transfer a disk volume -- rather, your systems should be capable of configuring a new server based upon a startup configuration script and data should be stored in a separate database so that it is accessible to multiple instances. It is a very rare case that requires a complete copy of a disk volume.
Currently I am taking manual backup of our EC2 instance by zipping the data and downloading it locally as well as on DropBox.
But I am wondering, can I have an option where I just take a complete copy of the whole system automatically daily so if something goes wrong/crashes, I can replace it with previous copy immediately rather than spending hours installing and configuring things ?
I can see there is an option of take "Image" but can I automated them to have just 1 latest image and replace the system with single click ?
You can create a single Image of your instance as Backup of your instance Configuration.
And
To keep back up of your data you can use snapshots of your volumes.
snapshots store data in incremental format whenever you make any changes.
When ever needed you can just attach the volume from the snapshot to your Instance.
It is not a good idea to do "external backup" for EC2 instance snapshot, before you read AWS pricing details.
First, AWS is charging every GB of data your transfer OUTside AWS cloud. Check out this pricing. Generally speaking, after the 1st GB, the rest will be charge at least $0.09/GB, against S3-standard pricing ~ $0.023/GB.
Second, the snapshot created is actually charges as S3 pricing(Check :
Copying an Amazon EBS Snapshot), not EBS pricing. After offset the transfer cost, perhaps you should consider create multiple snapshot than keep doing the data transfer out backup.
HOWEVER, if you happens to use an instance that use ephemeral storage, snapshot will not help. You need to copy the data out from ephemeral storage yourself. Then it is your choice to store under S3 or other place.
Third. If you worry the AWS region going down, check the multiple AZ option. Or checkout alternate AWS region option.
Fourth. When storing backup data in S3, you can always store them under Infrequent-Access, which save you some bucks, and you don't need to face an insane Glacier bills during emergency restore(Avoid Glacier, unless you are pretty sure about your own requirement).
Fifth, after done your plan of doing everything inside AWS, you can write bash script (AWS CLI) or use boto3, etc API to do the automatic backup.
Lastly , here is way of AWS create and maintain snapshot. Though each snapshot are deem "incremental", when u delete old snap shot :
the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain
only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.
You can always "test" restore by create another EC2 instance that load the backup snapshot. Or you can mount the snapshot volume from another EC2 instance to check the contents.
I am facing an architecture-related problem:
I have created a new environment in ElasticBeanstalk and pushed my app there. All good so far. I have set it to auto scale up/down.
My app depends on filesystem storage (it creates files and then serves them to users). I am using an EBS volume (5gb large) to create the files and then push them to S3 and delete them from EBS. The reason I'm using EBS is because of ephemeral filesystem in EC2 instances.
When AWS scales up new instances don't have the EBS volume attached because EBS can be attached to one instance at a time.
When it scales down, it shuts down the instance that had the EBS volume attached, which totally messes things up.
I have added to /etc/fstab a special line that will automatically mount the EBS volume to /data but that only applies for the instance I add the file to /etc/fstab. I guess the solution here would be to create a customized AMI image with that special line. But again, EBS can't be attached to more than one instance at a time, so it seems like a dead end.
What am I thinking wrong? What would be a possible solution or the proper way of doing it?
For some reason, I believe that using S3 is not the right way of doing it.
S3 is a fine way to do it: your application creates the file, uploads to S3, removes the file from the local filesystem, and hands a URL to access the file back to the client. Totally reasonable. Why you can't use ephemeral storage for this. Instance store-backed instances have additional storage available, mounted to /mnt by default. Why can't the application create the file there? If the files don't need to be persisted between instance start/stop/reboot then there's no great reason to use EBS (unless you want faster boot times for your autoscale instances I suppose).