EBS Volume

An EBS volume is a flexible block-level storage that can be mounted to devices on EC2 instances. Once mounted, it can be formatted with a file system, host operating systems and applications, and have snapshots or clones made from it.

Terraform Name

aws_ebs_volume

EBS Volume

attributes:

availability_zone - (Required) The AZ where the EBS volume will exist.
encrypted - (Optional) If true, the disk will be encrypted.
final_snapshot - (Optional) If true, snapshot will be created before volume deletion. Any tags on the volume will be migrated to the snapshot. By default set to false
iops - (Optional) The amount of IOPS to provision for the disk. Only valid for type of io1, io2 or gp3.
multi_attach_enabled - (Optional) Specifies whether to enable Amazon EBS Multi-Attach. Multi-Attach is supported on io1 and io2 volumes.
size - (Optional) The size of the drive in GiBs.
snapshot_id (Optional) A snapshot to base the EBS volume off of.
outpost_arn - (Optional) The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the Outpost.
type - (Optional) The type of EBS volume. Can be standard, gp2, gp3, io1, io2, sc1 or st1 (Default: gp2).
kms_key_id - (Optional) The ARN for the KMS encryption key. When specifying kms_key_id, encrypted needs to be set to true. Note: Terraform must be running with credentials which have the GenerateDataKeyWithoutPlaintext permission on the specified KMS key as required by the EBS KMS CMK volume provisioning process to prevent a volume from being created and almost immediately deleted.
tags - (Optional) A map of tags to assign to the resource. If configured with a provider default_tags configuration block present, tags with matching keys will overwrite those defined at the provider-level.
throughput - (Optional) The throughput that the volume supports, in MiB/s. Only valid for type of gp3.

Associating resources with a

EBS Volume

Resources do not "belong" to a

EBS Volume

Rather, one or more Security Groups are associated to a resource.

Create

EBS Volume

via Terraform:

The following HCL creates an EBS volume with tags

Syntax:

resource "aws_ebs_volume" "example" {
availability_zone = "us-west-2a"
size = 40
tags = {
Name = "HelloWorld"
}
}

‍

Create

EBS Volume

via CLI:

Parameters:

create-volume
--availability-zone <value>
[--encrypted | --no-encrypted]
[--iops <value>]
[--kms-key-id <value>]
[--outpost-arn <value>]
[--size <value>]
[--snapshot-id <value>]
[--volume-type <value>]
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
[--tag-specifications <value>]
[--multi-attach-enabled | --no-multi-attach-enabled]
[--throughput <value>]
[--client-token <value>]
[--cli-input-json | --cli-input-yaml]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]
[--debug]
[--endpoint-url <value>]
[--no-verify-ssl]
[--no-paginate]
[--output <value>]
[--query <value>]
[--profile <value>]
[--region <value>]
[--version <value>]
[--color <value>]
[--no-sign-request]
[--ca-bundle <value>]
[--cli-read-timeout <value>]
[--cli-connect-timeout <value>]
[--cli-binary-format <value>]
[--no-cli-pager]
[--cli-auto-prompt]
[--no-cli-auto-prompt]

Example:

aws ec2 create-volume \
--availability-zone us-east-1a \
--volume-type gp2 \
--size 80 \
--tag-specifications 'ResourceType=volume,Tags=[{Key=purpose,Value=production},{Key=cost-center,Value=cc123}]'

Costs

The cost of using EBS Volumes depends on several factors, including the volume type, the amount of storage used, and the amount of data transfer. For volume types, you are charged based on the hourly rate for the volume type you choose. The cost of volume types varies depending on the region you are using. For storage, you are charged based on the amount of data stored in your EBS volumes. The cost of storage varies depending on the region you are using. For data transfer, you are charged based on the amount of data transferred in and out of your EBS volumes. The cost of data transfer varies depending on the region you are using.

EBS Volume

Terraform Name

Costs

Indirect Cost

How to find idle AWS resources to reduce cost

Hands-on Guide: How to migrate from gp2 to gp3 volumes and lower AWS cost