CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mongodbamazon-ec2
Don L.
Don L.

Reputation: 77

Backing up EC2 instance from Ephemeral to Persistent Storage

I'm pretty new with EC2 and backing up data, but currently, the app that I've built has no backup strategy and I want to know how to build a proper one. Currently, I have my RoR app and my MongoDB database on one instance. I've just now read about EBS volumes and snapshots, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

Supposedly EBS can be used as a datastore. If that is so, how do I set up a MongoDB database in EBS and migrate the data I have in my EC2 instance to it? I'm not familiar with configuring EBS and I've read the documentation and have more questions than answers.

In short, my instance is ephemeral storage right now and I want to turn it into persistent storage.

Thank you,

Don

Upvotes: 0

Views: 184

Answers (1)

mootmoot
mootmoot

Reputation: 13166

It is pretty simple.

  • EBS is network disk volumes, it is used to store data.
  • A snapshot is an compress image backup, so this can apply to EC2 instance, RDS instances, even snapshot EBS volumes itself. After create the snapshot, it must store some where, thus, AWS use to store this backup into EBS.

Configure EBS is not difficult, it is little different that put on a new hard drive. You just need to "attach" an EBS volume to your instance. Then inside the EC2, do the usual OS disk initialisation work.

Because EBS is a dynamic storage, as long as your EC2 instance OS support it, you can extend the disk space anytime you need it (although it is recommended to do backup before doing it).

But from the operation perspective, you may want to consider putting your data into RDS if it is run for 24x7x365. So you don't need to deal with DB installation, complicate replication update,etc. If you run the DB occasionally, then you might want to stick to the EC2 instance mongodb.

Upvotes: 1

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