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I was thinking about switching from AWS Elastic Block Storage to AWS Elastic Filesystem (mainly for the easy scalability, also shareable storage seems nice).

At the moment I have one debian EC2 instance with one EBS volume. What's the easiest way to transfer my data from EBS to EFS?

theCed7
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    Note that the EBS volume will still be required for the instance so I'm assuming you just want to transfer application data or other stored files. – jzonthemtn Aug 05 '16 at 23:18

4 Answers4

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The fastest way to achieve this is mount that EFS file system to your EC2 instance with EBS and then transfer the data from your EBS to EFS.

Follow this guide for mounting the EFS to your EC2 instance. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/mounting-fs.html

Piyush Patil
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EFS is good for sharing data between multiple EC2 instances, but you would still want to use EBS for the root drive (boot volume) of your instance.

You cannot boot from an EFS volume.

You mention that you have "one debian EC2 instance with one EBS volume". However, it is generally best to keep data separate from the boot volume (eg in a database, an S3 bucket or in EFS). This allows the instance to be recreated from an AMI in case of problems, without losing data.

If you wish to move/copy data to an EFS volume, just use normal filesystem commands (eg cp -r).

John Rotenstein
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I think you can also use AWS DataSync to copy data from existing folder to EFS mounted folder.

Nathan B
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(1) You need to set up an NFS service using the instance that you have your EBS attached to. cf. https://linuxhint.com/install-and-configure-nfs-server-ubuntu-22-04/ for example and step-by-steps. You can test that your NFS server works by using another instance, and mounting it there using /etc/fstab .. (I think the link above shows you how to do that). You will need the IP address of your NFS server (for me, this is 10.0.33.5)

(2) You will need to deploy a DataSync Agent - this is a new instance. It need lots of ram (so, expensive) - eg m1.xlarge - especially if your EBS is big and has many thousands of files. look here for that https://docs.aws.amazon.com/datasync/latest/userguide/deploy-agents.html#ec2-deploy-agent

You now have an DataSync Agent Instance (which should be on the same subnet and AZ as your NFS instance) showing on your EC2. You will need it's private IP number.. (for me, this is 10.0.33.111)

(3) You need to create an AWS Endpoint. (in VPC) You are going to add one with AWS Services - search for and choose 'datasync', and add that to the subnets that your NFS Server and Agent are on. Once that is created, you will need the IP address of the subnet / AZ that you are using. (For me this is 10.0.33.222)

(4) You will need to get your Agent Activation Key. ssh into an instance (like your nfs server) on the same subnet and then to get your key, using the url below with your region (mine is eu-west-1 ) and the two IP numbers you have recorded.. Do not use MY ones!!

curl "http://10.0.33.111/?gatewayType=SYNC&activationRegion=eu-west-1&privateLinkEndpoint=10.0.33.222&endpointType=PRIVATE_LINK&no_redirect"

If all is well you will get a long Activation Key string like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

(5) Now you need to add all this into your DataSync Agents list (it's an Amazon EC2 Hypervisor, using a VPC endpoint using "AWS PrivateLink". The endpoint should show automatically) and paste in your ID Activation Key from step 4 above. You should now see an active Agent in your Agents list (in DataSync).

(6) Now you can create a Location that uses that agent. Select NFS, and your Agent, Now put the ip address of your nfs server (from step 1, eg 10.0.33.5) and the mount path (the same as what you used in your /etc/exports file on the instance where you have attached your EBS eg /mnt/mydrive

(7) NOW you can create a DataSync task from your NFS to your EFS..

Konchog
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