Moving an AWS Cloud9 IDE from Amazon EBS volumes - AWS Cloud9
Move an environmentMoving an AWS Cloud9 EC2 environment to a different Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

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Moving an AWS Cloud9 IDE from Amazon EBS volumes

You can move an AWS Cloud9 development environment from one Amazon EC2 instance to another. For example, you might want to do the following actions:

  • Transfer an environment from an Amazon EC2 instance that's impaired or performing in unexpected ways compared with a healthy instance.

  • Transfer an environment from an existing instance to one that has the latest system updates.

  • Increase or decrease an instance's compute resources because the environment is overused or underused on the current instance.

You can upgrade from one AWS Cloud9 supported AMI to another by migrating to a new AWS Cloud9 EC2 environment, while keeping the project files. You may want to upgrade to another version of the AMI because:

  • The AMI of the current environment has reached end-of-life and is no longer supported.

  • The package that you need is outdated in the current AMI.

You can also resize the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume that's associated with an Amazon EC2 instance for an environment. For example, you might want to do one or both of the following actions:

  • Increase the size of a volume because you're running out of storage space on the instance.

  • Decrease the size of a volume because you don't want to pay for extra storage space that you aren't using.

Before you move or resize an environment, you can try stopping some running processes in the environment or adding a swap file to the environment. For more information about dealing with low memory or high CPU usage, see Troubleshooting.

Note

This topic only describes moving an environment from one Amazon EC2 instance to another or resizing an Amazon EBS volume. To resize an environment from one of your own servers or to change the storage space for one of your own servers, refer to your server's documentation.

Last, you can encrypt Amazon EBS resources to ensure the security of both data-at-rest and data-in-transit between an instance and its attached EBS storage.

Move an environment

Before you start the move process, note the following conditions:

  • You can't move an environment to an Amazon EC2 instance of the same type. When you move, you must choose a different Amazon EC2 instance type for the new instance.

    Important

    If you move your environment to another Amazon EC2 instance type, that instance type must also be supported by AWS Cloud9 in the current AWS Region. To check the instance types that are available in each Region, go to the Configure settings page that's displayed when creating an EC2 environment with the console. Your choice in the Instance type section is determined by the AWS Region that's selected in the upper right of the console.

  • You must stop the Amazon EC2 instance that's associated with an environment before you can change the instance type. While the instance is stopped, you and any members can't use the environment that's associated with the stopped instance.

  • AWS moves the instance to new hardware, however, the instance's ID doesn't change.

  • If the instance is running in an Amazon VPC and has a public IPv4 address, AWS releases the address and gives the instance a new public IPv4 address. The instance retains its private IPv4 addresses and any Elastic IP addresses or IPv6 addresses.

  • Plan for downtime while your instance is stopped. The process might take several minutes.

To move an environment

  1. (Optional) If the new instance type requires drivers that aren't installed on the existing instance, connect to your instance and install those drivers. For more information, see Compatibility for resizing instances in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  2. Close all web browser tabs that are currently displaying the environment.

    Important

    If you don't close all of the web browser tabs that are currently displaying the environment, AWS Cloud9 might interfere with completing this procedure. Specifically, AWS Cloud9 might try at the wrong time during this procedure to restart the Amazon EC2 instance that's associated with the environment. The instance must stay stopped until the very last step in this procedure.

  3. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, if you're not already signed in, at https://console.aws.amazon.com.

    We recommend you sign in using administrator-level credentials in your AWS account. If you can't do this, check with your AWS account administrator.

  4. Open the Amazon EC2 console. To do this, in the Services list, choose EC2.

  5. In the AWS navigation bar, choose the AWS Region that contains the environment that you want to move (for example, US East (Ohio)).

  6. In the service navigation pane, expand Instances, and then choose Instances.

  7. In the list of instances, choose the one that's associated with the environment that you want to move. For an EC2 environment, the instance name starts with aws-cloud9- followed by the environment name. For example, if the environment is named my-demo-environment, the instance name starts with aws-cloud9-my-demo-environment.

  8. If the Instance State is not Stopped, choose Actions, Instance state, Stop. When prompted, choose Yes, Stop. It can take a few minutes for the instance to stop.

  9. After the Instance State is stopped, with the instance still selected, choose Actions, Instance Settings, Change Instance Type.

  10. In the Change Instance Type dialog box, choose the new Instance Type for the environment to use.

    Note

    If the instance type that you want doesn't appear in the list, it's not compatible with the configuration of the instance. For example, the instance might not be compatible because of the virtualization type.

  11. (Optional) If the instance type that you chose supports EBS–optimization, select EBS-optimized to enable EBS–optimization, or clear EBS-optimized to disable EBS–optimization.

    Note

    If the instance type you chose is EBS–optimized by default, EBS-optimized is selected and you can't clear it.

  12. Choose Apply to accept the new settings.

    Note

    If you didn't choose a different instance type for Instance Type earlier in this procedure, nothing happens after you choose Apply.

  13. Reopen the environment. For more information, see Opening an environment in AWS Cloud9.

For more information about the preceding procedure, see Changing the instance type in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Moving an AWS Cloud9 EC2 environment to a different Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

This topic explains how to migrate an AWS Cloud9 EC2 environment from one Amazon Linux AMI to another AWS Cloud9 supported AMI.

Note

If you want to move your environment to a new instance without updating the OS version, see Move an environment.

You can migrate your data between environments using one of the following procedures:

To move an environment by downloading archive to a local machine

  1. Create a new environment in the same Availability Zone with a different base image:

    1. Complete the steps in the Creating an EC2 Environment section to create a new environment.

      Note

      While choosing the Platform, select the platform that you want to migrate your environment to.

    2. By default, environments are created with 10 GiB volume. If you don't have sufficient space to upload or unpack the archive to the new environment, complete the steps in Resize an Amazon EBS volume that an environment uses procedure to resize Amazon EBS volume size.

  2. Open the environment that you want to migrate in the AWS Cloud9 IDE.

  3. After the AWS Cloud9 IDE loads, select File > Download project from the menu to download the archive with the contents of the environment project directory.

  4. Open AWS Cloud9 IDE in the new environment.

  5. Choose File > Upload local files... to upload the archive.

  6. (Optional) To back up the old .c9 directory to .c9.backup, in the environment terminal, run the following command: 

    cp .c9 .c9.backup

    You may need these backup files if you want to restore the configuration files later.

  7. To unpack the archive, run the following command: 

    tar xzvf <old_environment_name>.tar.gz -C ~/

  8. To delete the archive from the project directory, run the following command:

    rm <old_environment_name>.tar.gz

    Ensure that the new environment works as expected.

  9. You can now delete the old environment.

To move an environment using Amazon EBS volume

If you are not able to download the archive, or if the resulting archive is too large, you can use the Amazon EBS volume to migrate. Also, this method enables you to copy files that are located outside the ~/environment directory.

  1. Close all AWS Cloud9 IDE tabs that are open in the existing environment.

  2. Complete the following steps to stop the existing instance:

    1. In the AWS Cloud9 console, select the environment to navigate to view its details.

    2. On the Environment details page, under the EC2 instance tab, choose Manage EC2 instance.

    3. In the EC2 console, select the instance to navigate to the instance details.

    4. Ensure that the Instance state is set to Stopped. If not, select Stop instance from the Instance state dropdown list. When prompted, choose Stop. It can take a few minutes for the instance to stop.

  3. Create a new environment in the same Availability Zone with a different base image:

    1. Complete the steps in the Creating an EC2 Environment section to create a new environment.

      Note

      While choosing the Platform, select the platform that you want to migrate your environment to.

    2. By default, environments are created with 10 GiB volume. If you don’t have sufficient space to move files from the source volume to the new environment, complete the steps in Resize an Amazon EBS volume that an environment uses procedure to resize Amazon EBS volume size.

  4. Complete the following steps to detach the volume from the existing instance:

    1. On the Instance summary page, choose the Storage tab and select the volume. The device name of the selected volume must be the same as the one that is specified in the Root device name of the Root device details section.

    2. On the volume details page, choose Actions > Detach volume.

    3. After the volume is successfully detached, choose Actions > Attach volume and then find and select the instance of the new environment from the dropdown list. The name of the Amazon EC2 instance that you select must contain the AWS Cloud9 environment name prefixed with aws-cloud9.

  5. Open AWS Cloud9 IDE in the new environment.

  6. After the environment loads, to identify the device of the newly attached volume, run the following command in the terminal: 

    lsblk

    In the following sample output, partition nvme0n1 of root device nvme0n1p1 is already mounted, hence the nvme1n1p1 partition must also be mounted. The full path for its device is /dev/nvme1n1p1:

    Admin:~/environment $ lsblk
NAME          MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1       259:0    0  10G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1   259:2    0  10G  0 part /
├─nvme0n1p127 259:3    0   1M  0 part 
└─nvme0n1p128 259:4    0  10M  0 part /boot/efi
nvme1n1       259:1    0  10G  0 disk 
├─nvme1n1p1   259:5    0  10G  0 part 
└─nvme1n1p128 259:6    0   1M  0 part
    Note

    The output varies when you run this command in your terminal.

  7. Complete the following steps in the environment terminal to mount the existing volume:

    1. To create a temporary directory where the volume’s partition will be mounted, run the following command:

      MOUNT_POINT=$(mktemp -d)

    2. Based on the lsblk command's sample output, specify the following path of the device to be mounted:

      MOUNT_DEVICE=/dev/nvme1n1p1
      Note

      The output varies when you run this command in your terminal.

    3. To mount the existing volume, run the following command: 

      sudo mount $MOUNT_DEVICE $MOUNT_POINT

    4. Complete the following steps to verify if the existing volume is correctly mounted:

      1. To ensure that the volume is included in the output, run the following command: 

        df -h

      2. To verify contents of the volume, run the following command:

        ls $MOUNT_POINT/home/ec2-user/environment/

  8. (Optional) To back up the old .c9 directory to .c9.backup, in the environment terminal, run the following command: 

    cp .c9 .c9.backup

    You may need these backup files if you want to restore the configuration files later.

  9. To copy the old environment from the existing volume, run the following command:

    cp -R $MOUNT_POINT/home/ec2-user/environment ~
    Note

    If required, you can also copy files or directories outside of the environment directory using the preceding command.

    Ensure that the new environment works as expected.

  10. To unmount the previous device, run one of the two following commands: 

    sudo umount $MOUNT_DEVICE
    sudo umount $MOUNT_POINT

  11. Choose Detach volume from the Actions dropdown list to detach the volume that you attached in Step 3.

  12. You can now delete the old environment and its volume.

    Note

    Since the volume is no longer attached to the environment’s Amazon EC2 instance, you’ll need to remove it manually. You can do this by choosing Delete on the Volume details page.