How I Attached and Mounted an EBS Volume to My Ubuntu EC2 Instance: A Step-by-Step Guide

Oluwatunmise — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 20:28:23 +0000

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a vital AWS service that provides persistent block storage volumes for EC2 instances. It enables you to store data that persists beyond the life of a single EC2 instance. In this guide, I'll walk you through how I created, attached, formatted, mounted, and configured a new EBS volume on my Ubuntu EC2 instance.

📂 Step 1: Create a New EBS Volume

From the AWS Console:

I navigated to EC2 > Elastic Block Store > Volumes.
Clicked Create Volume.
Chose gp3 volume type, 5 GiB size, and selected the same Availability Zone as my EC2 instance (e.g., eu-west-1a).

Why it matters: EBS volumes must be in the same AZ as your instance to be attachable.

🔗 Step 2: Attach the Volume to EC2 Instance

After creating the volume, I selected it and chose Actions > Attach volume.
I selected my EC2 instance and set the device name as /dev/xvdf.

🚀 Step 3: Connect to EC2 via SSH & Verify Volume

I connected to my EC2 instance using SSH

Why it matters: This confirms the volume is visible to the OS.

🔢 Step 4: Format the Volume with ext4

Why: A filesystem must be applied before mounting. ext4 is a common Linux filesystem.

🗂️ Step 5: Create Mount Point & Mount the Volume

The mount point is simply a directory on your Linux system (like /data) where the EBS volume’s storage will appear. Once mounted, any files you create or copy into /data are stored on that EBS volume, not on your instance’s root disk.

✏️ Step 6: Write a Test File

This proves the volume is writable and mounted correctly.

⏹️ Step 7: Stop and Start EC2, Then Re-Mount

After stopping and starting the EC2 instance, I ran:

🌟 Conclusion: What I Learned

This exercise gave me a hands-on understanding of persistent storage in AWS. I learned how to:

Provision and attach EBS volumes
Format and mount them to an instance

And here’s an important note: since your root storage is an EBS volume, your data will still exist even if you stop the instance. When you start it again, it picks up right where you left off. The only time it gets deleted is if you chose the option Delete on termination.

Now I can confidently handle EBS in real-world scenarios.

If you're new to EBS or EC2, I hope this post demystifies the process. Feel free to ask questions or share your experience in the comments!

AWS Made Simple: How to Launch Your First EC2 Instance (No Stress Guide)

Oluwatunmise — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 12:50:14 +0000

Spinning up your first EC2 instance can feel like trying to start a spaceship 🚀. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be an astronaut (or a DevOps wizard) to do it!

✅Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:

An AWS account
Access to the AWS Management Console
An SSH key pair (or be ready to create one)

🖥 Step 1: Log in to the AWS Management Console
Go to the AWS Console and search for EC2 in the search bar.

🖥 Step 2: Click on "Launch Instance"

On the EC2 Dashboard, click the Launch instance button to begin the setup.

🖥 Step 3: Name Your Instance

Give your instance a clear and descriptive name.

🖥 Step 4: Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Select an AMI (Amazon Machine Image). For beginners, the Amazon Ubuntu (Free tier eligible) is a safe choice.

🖥 Step 5: Choose an Instance Type

Pick the instance type. The t2.micro or t3.micro is free tier eligible and works well for testing.

🖥 Step 6: Configure Key Pair
Select an existing key pair or create a new one. This will be used later to connect via SSH.

⚠️ Save the .pem file securely because you won’t be able to download it again.

🖥 Step 7: Configure Network Settings

In Network settings, make sure to allow SSH (port 22) so you can connect, and optionally HTTP and HTTPS if you are running a web app.

🖥 Step 8: Storage Settings

Leave the default storage, usually 8GB, or adjust if your use case requires more.

🖥 Step 9: Launch the Instance
Review your configuration and click Launch instance 🎉

🖥 Step 10: Verify Instance is Running

Go back to the EC2 Dashboard, and you should see your instance with the status Running.

🖥 Step 11: Connect to Your Instance via SSH
Step by Step

Put in your created key pair

🎯 Congratulations!

You’ve just launched and connected to your first EC2 instance! 🥳

From here, you can:

Install a web server (sudo yum install httpd)
Deploy an app
Or just poke around and learn Linux in the cloud

💡 Tip: EC2 is your gateway into AWS. Once you’re comfortable, check out Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancers, and EBS volumes.

DEV Community: Oluwatunmise