Attaching a Volume to an Existing Amazon EC2 Instance

From an Amazon EC2 instance backup, you can restore an instance volume and attach it to an existing instance.

Prerequisites

If a passkey is configured for restores, you must have the passkey.

Procedure

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

   The OVerview page appears.

2. On the VM groups tab, in the row for the VM group, click the action button , and then click Restore.

   The Select restore type page appears.

3. Click Attach volume.

   The Attach volume page appears.

4. Select the volumes to restore, and then click Restore.

   The Restore options dialog box appears.

5. From the Destination list, select the AWS account where the instance that you want to attach the volume to resides.

6. For Access node, leave Automatic (the default value) selected, or select an access node or an access node group.

   • For the best results, use the Automatic option because it does the following:

     • Selects the most appropriate access nodes.

       Potential for egress charges

       The Commvault software assigns the workload to access nodes as follows:

       1. To access nodes in the same AZ.

       2. If no access nodes in the same AZ are available, to access nodes in the same Region.

       3. If no access nodes in the same Region are available, to any available access node (which incurs egress charges).

     • Provides resiliency against access node failure (that is, if an access node fails during a restore, the software restarts the restore on other, available access nodes).

     • Distributes the workload across the access nodes that are assigned for the destination AWS account.

   • If you select a specific access node or access node group, consider the following:

     • If you select an access node that is outside of AWS, the software uploads volume information to Amazon S3 and uses the volumes to create the EC2 instance.

     • If you select an access node group, the software distributes the workload across the access nodes that are available in the access node group.

   Potential for egress charges

   When you restore EC2 instances from an Amazon S3 library in one AWS Region to another Region, consider Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) egress costs. For more information, see Data Transfer on the Amazon EC2 On-Demand Pricing page in the AWS documentation.

7. From the Restore to existing instance list, select the instance to attach the restored volume to.

8. For Volume options, modify the settings for the EBS volumes as follows:

   • You can select one or more volumes to modify.

     If you select multiple volumes, and the volumes have different values for either Volume type or KMS key, then Leave value unchanged is displayed for that setting. Consider the following points:

     • Leave value unchanged indicates that the restored volumes will be restored with the same value as the source volumes.

     • You can select a different value, and the value that you select applies to all the volumes that you are modifying.

   • For backups from Commvault Platform Release 2024 (11.34) and previous releases, in Volume type and KMS key, Original is displayed. Original indicates the type of the source volume.

   • For Volume type, the options are limited to only those that are supported for the volume size.

     Volume types that are not supported for the volume size are visible, but not available to select.

     To view the minimum and maximum volume sizes for a volume type that is not available, hover over that volume type.

   • If IOPS applies, given the volume type, then you can modify the value.

     After you click Save, the Commvault software validates the value you enter. If the value is not in the supported range for the EBS volume type, the software displays the minimum and maximum values.

   • If Throughput applies, given the volume type, then you can modify the value.

     After you click Save, the Commvault software validates the value you enter. If the value is not in the supported range for the EBS volume type, the software displays the minimum, maximum, and baseline values.

     Note

     Some Amazon EBS volumes require a specific IOPS and throughput ratio. Verify both that your IOPS and throughput values are within the supported ranges for those values and that the ratio between your values is supported.

   • For KMS key, select an encryption key or option:

     Important

     • Commvault recommends that you enable default encryption of EBS volumes in each AWS account that creates EBS volumes. For information, see Enable encryption by default in the AWS documentation.

     • The following key types are supported:

       • AWS managed keys

       • AWS owned keys

       • Customer managed keys, including multi-region keys

     • Automatic (default value): This option is available for restores to a different AWS Region.

       If the identity that performs the restore has the ec2:GetEbsDefaultKmsKeyId action, then the default KMS key for EBS encryption will have "Default EBS Key" tag. The ec2:GetEbsDefaultKmsKeyId action is included in amazon_restricted_role_permissions.json.

     • No encryption: This option is not recommended. The AWS Well-Architected Framework (SEC08-BP02) recommends enforcing encryption at rest for sensitive data.

9. For Tags, you can add, modify, and delete AWS resource tags.

   If the source EBS volumes have AWS resource tags, then those tags are displayed (excluding the Name tag and the AWS reserved tags).

   Important

   • For backups that were created with Commvault Platform Release 2022E (11.28) and previous releases, if you add new tags, any existing tags on the EBS volume are removed.

   • If you delete tags, your restored EC2 instances might not be managed in accordance with your organization's policies.

10. Click Submit.