Creating a Snapshot on EC2

Back to parent: GotCloud

The following are notes taken when creating a Snapshot of a volume where the GotCloud software and data are installed.

Create an Instance with a Master GotCloud Volume

 Login to https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2       # EC2 Management Console

Pay attention to the region you are using, at least for now it seems any StarCluster activity must be in us-west-2.

Launch a new instance which we will use to set up the software and ultimately save it as an AMI. Your instance can use any memory size (t1.micro is fine), but should be running Ubuntu Server 12.04.1 LTS 64 bit. The root volume size does not matter either.

Create a volume to serve as the GotCloud master volume if you do not already have one. The volume size should be 20G at the moment. Be sure the zone is the same as the one for the instance you just launched/created. The volume should be based on 'No Snapshot'. Once it is created, attach it to the instance you have launched and mount it it /gotcloud

Install the Software

Follow the instructions to install a Debian package debian package Run the tests to be sure everything is OK.

Even though the references are not part of the distribution, you cannot do anything useful without references, so get them and make them available in /gotcloud

 cd /tmp
 wget share.sph.umich.edu:gotcloud/hs37-db132.tar.gz 
 cd /gotcloud
 tar xzf /tmp/hs37-db132.tar.gz
 ls -la ref
 rm -f /tmp/hs37-db132.tar.gz    # if no error

Create the SnapShot

In your browser at the EC2 Management Console choose Elastic Block Storage -> Volumes. Find the volume for current master you created above. Choose Actions -> Create Snapshot.

 Name:  GotCloud Distribution
 Description:  CSG GotCloud files from UMICH
 Note snapshot name  e.g. snap-9e782bb8

Now make the name of this snapshot available to the user population. In your Unix terminal, get the snapshots.txt file, update it and make it available:

 wget share.sph.umich.edu:gotcloud/snapshots.txt
 vi snapshots.txt   # Replace snapshot id with new one
 scp snapshots.txt gotcloud@share.sph.umich.edu: