Copying an AWS Instance to a New Region Without Losing Data
Introduction
This blog post walks you through the intricacies of migrating an AWS instance from one region to another. The primary motivation behind a migration is the need for a more powerful instance with a substantial GPU capacity for our data scientists to efficiently train an AI model.
While working on a project using AWS our team discovered that the current instance type (p3.2xlarge) was not large enough to handle the computational effort required for the project, and the team realized that they needed to switch to a larger instance (p3. 16xlarge). The team also discovered that such a large instance was not available in the region we were working on (Ireland) and to use such a large instance, we would need to launch our instance in the US-East region. However, having to create a new instance would be unfortunate since our team had already spent a lot of time on the current instance, having uploaded data to it, installed programs, created a Python environment, and so on. So we came up with a way to copy our AWS instance without losing data.
Three Essential Steps to Copying an AWS Instance
Copying an AWS instance to different regions without losing data consists of three major steps: 1. Create an image 2. Copy the image to a different region, 3. Create an instance from an image. Now we will describe those steps in more detail:
Create an image from the current instance: on the instances dashboard choose the required instance. Actions->image and template->create image.
2. Type the image name and click the “create image” button.
3. Under images choose AMIs. You will see your new image in pending status, wait until the status is available (this could take a few minutes).
4. When the status is available, choose the image and go to Actions->copy AMI.
5. Give the copied image a name, change the region to the region you want, and push copy AMI.
6. On the images panel go to the regions and choose the new region. You will see the copied image in status pending, wait until it is available.
7. When the copied image is available, choose it and push the launch instance button from AMI.
8. Follow the regular steps of launching an instance: instance name, instance type (now we can choose a larger one 😊), and key pair. And then push the 'launch instance' button.
After completing all these steps we now have the new AWS instance on the new region. The new instance contains everything we had on the original instance from Ireland. All installations and data are the same, same instance larger type (also more expensive). It is important to notice that all users opened in the original instance are also available in the new instance, with the same passwords and the same key pair.
Conclusion
By following the outlined steps, users can seamlessly transfer their AWS instances, optimizing resources and saving valuable time in the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing.
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