Hey everyone! I'm a total newbie and currently have an EC2 instance. I've been advised by Amazon that my instance is over-provisioned, so I'm interested in changing it to a different type. I've gone through the documentation, and it looks like the process involves powering down the instance, changing the type, and then powering it back up. I also need to update the IP address for the application using this instance. I'm wondering if there's anything else I should be aware of. Is there a risk of data loss? Will my data remain intact with the storage increase? Any additional configurations needed? Thanks in advance for any help!
2 Answers
Before you make the switch, could you clarify what the current instance type is and what you're planning to change it to? To avoid IP address changes, consider using Elastic IPs. You can reserve one and associate it with your instance, which means it’ll stay the same as long as the instance is running. To change the type, power down the instance, wait a moment for it to stop completely, then choose the new type and power it back on. Your attached volumes should remain the same and won't lose data unless you terminate the instance or delete them manually.
My current instance is m5d.xlarge, and AWS suggests switching to i4i.large. Thanks for the tip on Elastic IPs—I'll look into it!
Switching from m5d.xlarge to i4i.large means you’ll maintain 16GB of memory, but you're going down from 4 CPUs to 2 CPUs. However, you might benefit from improved local storage speed and network throughput. To change it, just stop the current instance, change the type, and start it back up. Just ensure that you don’t have anything important stored on ephemeral drives, as those will be wiped.
Just a heads-up on your point about volumes! This is true if you're using EBS volumes. But, if you have data on the ephemeral instance store, that will be lost during the switch.