Understanding Amazon EC2 Storage

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) provides scalable computing power in the cloud. Instances use storage for operating systems, applications, and data. Amazon EC2 offers two types of storage, namely:

1. EBS (Elastic Block Store): Persistent storage volumes that can be attached and detached from EC2 instances. These volumes can remain attached to instances even after they are stopped.
2. Instance Store: Temporary storage that is physically attached to the host machine. The data in instance store volumes is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated.

Understanding storage allocation is essential when dealing with capacity issues. Let's explore how to identify and resolve storage-related concerns for your EC2 instance.

Identifying Storage Issues

When you suspect that your EC2 instance's storage is full, follow these steps to diagnose and resolve the problem:

1. Check EBS Volume Usage

To determine if your EBS storage is full, follow these steps:

• Log into AWS Management Console: Navigate to the EC2 dashboard.
• Identify the instance: Locate your instance and click on the "Volumes" tab.
• Evaluate size and utilization: Check if any of the attached EBS volumes are near or at full capacity.

For a detailed view, use these commands in the EC2 instance:

• Open the CloudWatch Metrics dashboard.
• Navigate to Per-Volume Metrics for EBS statistics.
• Analyze metrics such as `VolumeReadOps`, `VolumeWriteOps`, `VolumeReadBytes`, and `VolumeWriteBytes`.
• Log clean-up: Remove old log files. Configure log rotation and deletion schedules.
• Temporary files: Remove files from `/tmp`, which might accumulate over time.
• Modify the volume:
• Extend the file system: On Linux, use `resize2fs` or a similar command based on your file system type.
• Move data to S3: Utilize Amazon S3 for storing large media or infrequently accessed data.