{"id":25199,"date":"2016-02-25T21:26:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T19:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=25199"},"modified":"2016-02-25T21:26:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T19:26:13","slug":"upgrading-amazon-ec2-instance-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2016\/02\/25\/upgrading-amazon-ec2-instance-type\/","title":{"rendered":"Upgrading Amazon EC2 instance type"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By now everybody knows that one of the major benefits to using cloud services rather than hosting on your own hardware is the ease to scale quickly. \u00a0Many web applications and large companies benefit from this, but what about smaller customers? \u00a0How about a single server?<\/p>\n

Well, today one of our web servers was experiencing some pick loads. \u00a0It hosts a whole array of small websites built with WordPress, CakePHP, and other popular tools. \u00a0There was no time to update all these projects to work with multiple web servers. \u00a0And even redeploying them to multiple individual servers would have taken a few hours. \u00a0Instead, we’ve decided to upgrade the server hardware.<\/p>\n

Pause for a second and imagine the situation with your own server. \u00a0Or a dedicated hosting account for that matter. \u00a0So much to configure. \u00a0So much to backup and restore. \u00a0So much to test.<\/p>\n

Here’s how to do it<\/a>, if your projects are on the Amazon EC2 instance (our was also inside a virtual private cloud (VPC), but even if it wasn’t, the difference would be insignificant):<\/p>\n

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  1. Login to the Amazon AWS console<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Navigate to the Amazon EC2<\/strong> section.<\/li>\n
  3. Click on Instances<\/strong> in the left sidebar.<\/li>\n
  4. Click on the instance that you want to upgrade in the list of your instances.<\/li>\n
  5. Click Actions -> Instance State -> Stop<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  6. Wait a few seconds for the instance to stop. \u00a0You can use the Refresh button to update the list.<\/li>\n
  7. (While your instance is still selected in the list of instances:) Click Actions -> Instance Settings -> Change Instance Type<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  8. In the popup window that appeared, select an Instance Type that you want.<\/li>\n
  9. Click Apply<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  10. Click Actions -> Instance State -> Start<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  11. Wait a few seconds for the instance to start.<\/li>\n
  12. Enjoy!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The whole process literally takes under two minutes. \u00a0You get exactly the same configuration – hostname, IP addresses (both internal and external), mounted EBS volumes, all your OS configuration, etc. \u00a0It’s practically a reboot of your machine. But into a different hardware configuration (CPU\/RAM).<\/p>\n

    Coincidentally, earlier this morning I had to pack up a rack-mountable server – screws, cables, dusty boxes, the whole shebang. \u00a0It’s been a while since I’ve done that last time.<\/p>\n

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    A post shared by Leonid Mamchenkov (@mamchenkov)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n