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Managing Amazon EBS volumes on Amazon EC2 gateways

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Managing Amazon EBS volumes on Amazon EC2 gateways - AWS Storage Gateway

When you initially configured your gateway to run as an Amazon EC2 instance, you allocated Amazon EBS volumes for use as an upload buffer and cache storage. Over time, as your applications needs change, you can allocate additional Amazon EBS volumes for this use. You can also reduce the storage you allocated by removing previously allocated Amazon EBS volumes. For more information about Amazon EBS, see Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Before you add more storage to the gateway, you should review how to size your upload buffer and cache storage based on your application needs for a gateway. To do so, see Determining the size of upload buffer to allocate and Determining the size of cache storage to allocate.

There are quotas on the maximum storage you can allocate as an upload buffer and cache storage. You can attach as many Amazon EBS volumes to your instance as you want, but you can only configure these volumes as upload buffer and cache storage space up to these storage quotas. For more information, see AWS Storage Gateway quotas.

To add an Amazon EBS volume and configure it for your gateway

  1. Create an Amazon EBS volume. For instructions, see Creating or Restoring an Amazon EBS Volume in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  2. Attach the Amazon EBS volume to your Amazon EC2 instance. For instructions, see Attaching an Amazon EBS Volume to an Instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  3. Configure the Amazon EBS volume you added as either an upload buffer or cache storage. For instructions, see Managing local disks for your Storage Gateway.

There are times you might find you don’t need the amount of storage you allocated for the upload buffer.

To remove an Amazon EBS volume
Warning

These steps apply only for Amazon EBS volumes allocated as upload buffer space, not for volumes allocated to cache. If you remove an Amazon EBS volume that is allocated as cache storage from a Tape Gateway, virtual tapes on the gateway will have the IRRECOVERABLE status, and you risk data loss. For more information on the IRRECOVERABLE status, see Understanding Tape Status Information in a VTL.

  1. Shut down the gateway by following the approach described in the Shutting Down Your Gateway VM section.

  2. Detach the Amazon EBS volume from your Amazon EC2 instance. For instructions, see Detaching an Amazon EBS Volume from an Instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  3. Delete the Amazon EBS volume. For instructions, see Deleting an Amazon EBS Volume in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

  4. Start the gateway by following the approach described in the Shutting Down Your Gateway VM section.

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