Add instance store volumes to an EC2 instance during launch - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Add instance store volumes to an EC2 instance during launch

When you launch an instance type with non-NVMe instance store volumes, such as C1, C3, M1, M2, M3, R3, D2, H1, I2, X1, and X1e, you must specify the block device mappings for the instance store volumes that you want to attach at launch. The block device mappings must be specified in the instance launch request or in the AMI used to launch the instance.

If the AMI includes block device mappings for the instance store volumes, you do not need to specify block device mappings in the instance launch request, unless you need more instance store volumes than is included in the AMI.

If the AMI does not include block device mappings for instance store volumes, then you must specify the block device mappings in the instance launch request.

For instance types with NVMe instance store volumes, all of the supported instance store volumes are automatically attached to the instance at launch.

Considerations

  • The number of available instance store volumes depends on the instance type. For more information, see Available instance store volumes.

  • You must specify a device name for each block device. For more information, see Device names for volumes on Amazon EC2 instances.

  • For M3 instances, you might receive instance store volumes even if you do not specify them in the block device mapping for the instance.

Console
To specify a block device mapping in an instance launch request

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  2. From the dashboard, choose Launch instance.

  3. In the Application and OS Images section, select the AMI to use.

  4. In the Configure storage section, the Instance store volumes section lists the instance store volumes that can be attached to the instance.

  5. For each instance store volume to attach, for Device name, select the device name to use.

  6. Configure the remaining instance settings as needed, and then choose Launch instance.

AWS CLI
To specify a block device mapping in an instance launch request

Use the run-instances command with the --block-device-mappings option.

--block-device-mappings file://mapping.json

The following block device mapping adds two instance store volumes.

[
    {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/sdc",
        "VirtualName": "ephemeral0"
    },
    {
        "DeviceName": "/dev/sdd",
        "VirtualName": "ephemeral1"
    }
]
PowerShell
To specify a block device mapping in an instance launch request

Use the New-EC2Instance cmdlet with the -BlockDeviceMapping option.

-BlockDeviceMapping $bdm

The following block device mapping adds two instance store volumes.

$bdm = @()

$sdc = New-Object -TypeName Amazon.EC2.Model.BlockDeviceMapping
$sdc.DeviceName = "/dev/sdc"
$sdc.VirtualName = "ephemeral0"
$bdm += $sdc

$sdd = New-Object -TypeName Amazon.EC2.Model.BlockDeviceMapping
$sdd.DeviceName = "/dev/sdd"
$sdd.VirtualName = "ephemeral1"
$bdm += $sdd