hi my name is Alessandra and I am a
cloud support engineer here at the AWS
Dublin office sometimes customers ask me
how to dynamically expanding base volume
of their windows instances because they
have run out of space and they don't
want to have downtime to perform this
operation with the EBS elastic avoiding
feature this is dynamically possible in
a few clicks let's get started
once you have login into the AWS console
you can go to the upper menu services
and choose the ec2 console then we move
to instances and here you will be able
to see your Windows instance when you
launch a Windows instance what you get
is a root volume that you can identify
in block devices and clicking on the
link you will get the volume ID right
clicking on the volume ID and opening in
a new tab you will see that the volume
is 30 gigabyte inside and gp2 type if
you RDP into your Windows instance you
will be able to see this as well from
the disk management and from the windows
explorer you see we have a root volume
of 30 gigabyte inside and in this case
we have also an additional EBS volume
again 30 gigabyte insights and both of
them are almost full now we are back in
the management console and we are going
to modify our sides we go to the Action
menu modify volume and we get this form
in this form you will be able to modify
the volume type to different types you
can change the size of the volume that
is what we are going to do and in case
you choose provision I ops volume you
will be also able to modify the
provision I opted for that volume of
course there are some limitation for
example if you choose provision I ops
the maximum ratio allowed is fifty to
one and if you choose SC one or st one
volume those volume should be at least
500 gigabyte in size but let's say we
just want to change the volume sides we
simply input the new value and then
click modify and then confirm with yes
then we refresh the AWS console in the
volume part and we see the status of the
volume is in use because it's still
attached to the instance and it's
optimizing state if we go in the
description tab there is an
informational clip that will show you
the source and the destination
characteristic of the volume that we
have chosen switching back to the RDP
session if we go in the disk management
and click on action refresh what
happened is that we immediately see the
new free space as unallocated and we can
just expand the filesystem for the
instance we right-click on the C Drive
and then extend volume with you click
leaving the default options we will have
the wall filesystem already expanded and
available for the operating system we
are back in the AWS ec2 console and as
you remember we have an additional
volume attached to our windows instance
again we click on the description tab on
the volume ID and open it in a new tab
where we can go and select the volume ID
from the description tab we can perform
the expansion of this additional volume
using the AWS CLI we can do the same
operation using the AWS CLI for example
I'm currently logged into an Linux
instance and we can do the operation
issue this command AWS ec2 modify volume
- - volume - ID and then we copy we
paste the volume ID that we have
previously copied from the console and
then we add the parameter - - sides and
we input the new sides of the volume and
then press return you will see that the
modification I started and you get an
output of the source and target
characteristic of the volume if you
wanna check the percentage of the
modification you can issue another
simple common AWS ec2 describe - volumes
- modifications death - volume ID and
then again we can paste the volume ID
and at this point we can see the
progress of the volume in this case it's
currently 24% switching back to the RDP
session again if we go to this
management action refresh we see again
the available and allocate
space and we can extend the volume just
leaving the default parameters and
that's it we have the new volume
expanded already available we are back
in the AWS console in the past if you
want to perform the same operation of
expanding a root volume it was much
longer because you need to go to
management console select your instance
go to action instance state and stop the
instance then once your instance was
stopped you need to move to the volume
the touch the volume from the instance
then one the volume was the touch you
need to create a snapshot you need to
wait for the snapshot to complete and
then you will need to move to the
snapshot volume and create a new volume
with the new sides and after that attach
it to the windows instance this method
is still available but it requires much
more than downtime we are back in the
AWS console and we if we go and check
for the volume status at the end of the
operation you will see the volume state
as in use because it's still attached to
the instance and we did the operation on
the flight and completed 100% thanks for
watching the video and happy cloud
computing from all of us here at AWS