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As somebody that used to work at Solar Microsystems, the place ZFS was invented, I’ve at all times cherished working with storage techniques that supply immediate quantity copies for my improvement and testing wants.
In the present day, I’m excited to share that AWS is bringing comparable capabilities to Amazon Elastic Block Retailer (Amazon EBS) with the launch of Amazon EBS Quantity Clones, a brand new functionality that permits you to create immediate point-in-time copies of your EBS volumes throughout the identical Availability Zone.
Many purchasers must create copies of their manufacturing information to assist improvement and testing actions in a separate nonproduction atmosphere. Till now, this course of required taking an EBS snapshot (saved in Amazon Easy Storage Service (Amazon S3)) after which creating a brand new quantity from that snapshot. Though this method works, the method creates operational overhead because of a number of steps.
With Amazon EBS Quantity Clones, now you can create copies of your EBS volumes with a single API name or console click on. The copied volumes can be found inside seconds and supply instant entry to your information with single-digit millisecond latency. This makes Quantity Clones significantly helpful for rapidly establishing check environments with manufacturing information or creating short-term copies of databases for improvement functions.
Let me present you ways Quantity Clones works
For this submit, I created a small Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) occasion, with an connected quantity. I created a file on the foundation file system with the command echo "Howdy CopyVolumes" > hey.txt.
To provoke the copy, I open a browser on the AWS Administration Console and I navigate to EC2, Elastic Block Retailer, Volumes. I choose the amount I need to copy.
Word that, on the time of publication of this submit, solely encrypted volumes may be copied.
On the Actions menu, I select the Copy Quantity possibility.
Subsequent, I select the main points of the goal quantity. I can change the Quantity kind and alter the Dimension, IOPS, and Throughput parameters. I select Copy quantity to start out the Quantity Clone operation.
The copied quantity enters the Creating state and turns into obtainable inside seconds. I can then connect it to an EC2 occasion and begin utilizing it instantly.
Information blocks are copied from the supply quantity and written to the amount copy within the background. The quantity stays within the Initializing state till the method is full. I can monitor its progress with the describe-volume-status API. The initializing operation doesn’t have an effect on the efficiency of the supply quantity. I can proceed utilizing it usually throughout the copy course of.
I like that the copied quantity is accessible instantly. I don’t want to attend for its initialization to finish. Throughout the initialization part, my copied quantity delivers efficiency based mostly on the bottom of: a baseline of three,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s, the supply quantity’s provisioned efficiency, or the copied quantity’s provisioned efficiency.
After initialization is accomplished, the copied quantity turns into totally impartial of the supply quantity and delivers its full provisioned efficiency.
Alternatively, I can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to provoke the copy:
aws ec2 copy-volumes
--source-volume-id vol-1234567890abcdef0
--size 500
--volume-type gp3After the amount copy is created, I connect it to my EC2 occasion and mount it. I can examine the file I created at begin is current.
First, I connect the amount from my laptop computer, utilizing the attach-volume command:
aws ec2 attach-volume
--volume-id 'vol-09b700e3a23a9b4ad'
--instance-id 'i-079e6504ad25b029e'
--device '/dev/sdb'Then, I hook up with the occasion, and I kind these instructions:
$ sudo lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL UUID FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1
├─nvme0n1p1 xfs / 49e26d9d-0a9d-4667-b93e-a23d1de8eacd 6.2G 22% /
└─nvme0n1p128 vfat FAT16 3105-2F44 8.6M 14% /boot/efi
nvme1n1
├─nvme1n1p1 xfs / 49e26d9d-0a9d-4667-b93e-a23d1de8eacd
└─nvme1n1p128 vfat FAT16 3105-2F44
$ sudo mount -t xfs /dev/nvme1n1p1 /information
$ df -h
Filesystem Dimension Used Avail Use% Mounted on
devtmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /dev
tmpfs 924M 0 924M 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 370M 476K 369M 1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p1 8.0G 1.8G 6.2G 22% /
tmpfs 924M 0 924M 0% /tmp
/dev/nvme0n1p128 10M 1.4M 8.7M 14% /boot/efi
tmpfs 185M 0 185M 0% /run/consumer/1000
/dev/nvme1n1p1 8.0G 1.8G 6.2G 22% /information
$ cat /information/residence/ec2-user/hey.txt
Howdy CopyVolumesIssues to know
Quantity Clones creates copies throughout the identical Availability Zone as your supply quantity. You may create copies from encrypted volumes solely, and the dimensions of your copy should be equal to or better than the supply quantity.
Quantity Clones creates crash-consistent copies of your volumes, precisely like snapshots. For utility consistency, you must pause utility I/O operations earlier than creating the copy. For instance, with PostgreSQL databases, you need to use the pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() capabilities to pause writes and create a constant copy. On the working system stage on Linux with XFS, you need to use the xfs_freeze command to quickly droop and resume entry to the file system and guarantee all cached updates are written to disk.
Though Quantity Clones creates point-in-time copies, it enhances quite than replaces EBS snapshots for backup functions. EBS snapshots stay the beneficial answer for information backup and safety in opposition to AZ-level and quantity failures. Snapshots present incremental backups to Amazon S3 with 11 nines of sturdiness, in comparison with Quantity Clones which maintains EBS quantity sturdiness (99.999% for io2, 99.9% for different quantity varieties). Think about using Quantity Clones particularly for check and improvement atmosphere situations the place you want immediate entry to quantity copies.
Copied volumes exist independently of their supply volumes and proceed to incur normal EBS quantity costs till you delete them. To handle prices successfully, implement governance guidelines to establish and take away copied volumes which are not wanted in your improvement or testing actions.
Pricing and availability
Quantity Clones helps all EBS quantity varieties and works with volumes in the identical AWS account and Availability Zone. This new functionality is accessible in all AWS industrial Areas, chosen Native Zones, and within the AWS GovCloud (US).
For pricing, you’re charged a one-time payment per GiB of knowledge on the supply quantity at initiation and normal EBS pricing for the brand new quantity.
I discover Quantity Clones significantly precious for database workloads and steady integration (CI) situations. As an illustration, you possibly can rapidly create a replica of your manufacturing database for testing new options or troubleshooting points with out impacting your manufacturing atmosphere or ready for information to hydrate from Amazon S3.
To get began with Amazon EBS Quantity Clones, go to the Amazon EBS part on the console or try the EBS documentation. I stay up for listening to how you utilize this functionality to enhance your improvement workflows.
