#ubuntu-ec2 2010-04-12
<jgarbers> hi! i'm just getting started with EC2, using the EBS boot image kindly provided on (by?) Alestic â ami-6743ae0e.  I installed some apps and would like to create an image that contains all that stuff, so i right-clicked the running image and chose "Create Image (EBS AMI)".  It looks like it took about 15-20 mins for my new ami to be availableâ¦ is that about what you'd normally expect? did I do this right or is there a better way?
<hekman> jgarbers: yes, it can take a while...i've never done it through the web ui, but that is about how long it took for my CLI stuff to take
<hekman> it uploads a bunch of files to S3
<jgarbers> hekman: ah, of course - the AMIs normally live in S3, right?
<hekman> yes
<hekman> in fact, i don't think i've ever seen that option not greyed-out in the web ui
<jgarbers> gotcha. with all this virtuality i'm never sure how long something's going to take. seems like it's either 1/10 or 10x the time I expect.
<jgarbers> am i correct that if i want to basically "snapshot" a machine state so i can return to it later, that the "Create Image (EBS AMI)" is the correct approach? Rather than trying to clone the underlying EBS volume andâ¦ not sure, making a new instance boot from it?
<jgarbers> (am not real clear on the relationship between AMIs and boot-EBSes)
<hekman> oh - i missed the EBS part - i haven't made any of those
<jgarbers> when I save an ami like that, it goes to S3, right? if I browse to the S3 space associated with the account that owns the ami, should I see it?
<hekman> that's where my AMI went
<jgarbers> hm. i'm looking at my s3 space with Transmit and there's nothing there. maybe another toolâ¦ what do you use to browse S3?
#ubuntu-ec2 2010-04-13
<hekman> S3Hub
<erichammond> jgarbers: If you use Amazon's web interface to create a new EBS AMI, it will stop your instance, initiate a snapshot, restart the instance, and then register the snapshot as a new AMI once it's available.
<erichammond> It can take a while for the snapshot to complete if you have a lot of blocks used on the EBS volume.
<jgarbers> thanks, erichammond â and thanks for your blog and resources. i've found them massively helpful and comforting as I'm figuring all this stuff out.
<jgarbers> you're alestic, right?
<erichammond> Stopping the AMI during the snapshot is the safest way to guarantee that the new AMI will have consistent files, but I've had good luck just snapshotting a running system and registering it as an AMI.
<erichammond> jgarbers: Yes, http://alestic.com is one of my sites.
<jgarbers> i seem to be making pretty good progress so far. lots to learn.
<erichammond> jgarbers: You won't see EBS boot AMIs in S3, but you will see an associated EBS snapshot.
<erichammond> Snapshots are stored invisibly in S3.
<jgarbers> I don't see anything in S3, although I do see an EBS volume, three snapshots, and an AMI when I look using Amazon's console.
<jgarbers> is the idea there that amazon puts your ec2-related stuff in S3 but not in a place where you're going to muck around with it?
<erichammond> jgarbers: You do not have access to EBS snapshots in S3, but that is the storage mechanism, so you get all the benefits.
<jgarbers> gotcha.
<jgarbers> keep 'em away from curious fingers.
<jgarbers> it's not possible to mount an unattached EBS volume as a filesystem on your local machine, is it?
<jgarbers> from what you're saying, i'm guessing those things are invisible to everything except EC2 internals.
<erichammond> jgarbers: You must attach an EBS volume to an instance before it can be read/written, and it can only be mounted on the instance to which it is attached.
<jgarbers> that's what i figured. was thinking it'd be convenient to be able to browse it like a JungleDisk drive or something, but I can surely understand the need to keep that stuff under control. thanks
<erichammond> I use s3fs (fuse based) to store stuff on S3 from my local systems as well as EC2 systems.
<erichammond> It is file based, not a block device.  Different use cases, but handy when it applies.
<jgarbers> yep. dropbox and jungledisk both use S3, IIRC, and i've found 'em both to be very handy.
<jgarbers> during an SSH session to an ec2 instance, how can I get that instance's public address (ec2-blah.compute-1.amazon.aws.com))?
<jgarbers> have created an elastic IP address and assigned to it to an instance. instance ID shows up with the address under "Elastic IPs" but does not show up next to "Elastic IP" in the info when I select the instance from "Instances" (all this from the amazon console, of course). Does it take a while for the elastic IP assignment to "take"?
