increase_ec2_storage.md

Increase EC2 Storage

Created EC2 instances default to 8GB of storage. It's possible to configure this to a larger size at the time of instance creation, but I often find myself needing to adjust the storage of an already-running instance. It's painless, I can just never remember the sequence of commands.

7' Version

1. Resize EC2 storage in AWS console (EC2 → EBS → Modify Volume)
2. $ sudo growpart /dev/xvda1 1
3. $ sudo sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1

LP Version

NB: the name of your drive/partition might be different to /dev/xvda depending on your instance type (e.g. for one my accelerated computing machines the relevant drive is /dev/nvme0n1). In any case, the following sequence of steps is identical.

1. Resize EC2 instance's EBS Volume
   • Go to your EC2 dashboard and select the instance whose storage you want to change
   • Click on Storage and then select the Volume ID of the Volume you want to change
   • While the appropriate row Volume row is selected, click on the Actions dropdown and select Modify Volume
   • Change the storage size & apply the changes
2. Resize the OS partition of your instance
   • Run $ df -h to show the current size of the partition (should see that /dev/root or /dev/xvda partition is still only 8GB).
   • Run $ lsblk to see the EBS volume specifics. Here we should see that /dev/xvda has the new size set in the AWS console, but that it's child partition /dev/xvda1 (you root drive) only has 8GB.
   • Run $ sudo growpart /dev/xvda 1 to resize the partition to fill its parent
   • Rerun $ lsblk to make sure your partition is now the intended size.
3. Resize the filesystem
   • If you run $ df -h again, you'll see that despite sizing the partitions correctly, the filesystem is still showing 8GB. You need to resize this to fill the newly modified partition.
   • Run $ sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1, and recheck to $ df -h to make sure you changes were applied.

Voilà! 🍰