Converting your instance that does not have a volume into a volume

Do this if you notice lagging performance on a instance that you have set up with only virtual storage. Sometimes users may wish to add CPU or Memory resources to an existing VM instance. This can be accomplished easily through the Horizon interface:

  1. SSH into your instance an issue the command: shutdown -h now
    • Navigate to Project→Compute→Instances
    • Find the instance you gave the shutdown command to and verify the Power State is ‘Shut Down’
      • If it is not, wait a bit as it might still be in the process of shutting down.
      • If it has been a few minutes and it is still not shutdown, click on the arrow under actions and click on ‘Shut Off Instance’
  2. Create a snapshot of the Instance
    • While still on the page of your listed instances click on the instance dropdown under Actions
    • Click ‘Create Snapshot’
    • Give your snapshot a name and click ‘Create Snapshot’
    • The UI will automatically change your view to the snapshot list. One of the lines will be your new snapshot trying to create.
    • The snapshot is done when it is no longer highlighted and Status is ‘Active’
  3. Create a Volume from the Snapshot
    • Click on the Snapshot dropdown under Actions
    • Click on ‘Create Volume’
    • In the new prompt fill out the Volume Name and Description, and if you want the volume to be bigger increase the size as well. (Remember: Volumes can be grown but not reduced in size and cannot be bigger than your volume quota)
    • Type - NetApp (fast) or LargeDataStore (home for larger volumes). Boot volumes are almost always netapp and data volumes over 200G are almost always large data store. If in doubt or you get a error ask via cades-help@ornl.gov.
    • Click ‘Create Volume’
    • The UI will automatically change your view to the volume list. One of the lines will list your new volume trying to create.
  4. Launch a new Instance with your newly created Volume
    • Once the volume is done creating, launch a new instance with the volume
    • Click on the dropdown menu under 'Actions' for your new Volume
    • Click on 'Launch as Instance'
    • Fill out the Launch Instance prompt
    • Required Tabs have blue stars next to them. These must be filled out in order to launch
    • To insure the correct keys are uploaded, while not required according to the prompt, be sure to navigate to the Key Pair tab and add your key pair
    • Click on 'Launch Instance' when you have finished filling out all needed information.
    • Navigate to Project→Compute→Instances
    • Your new instance should be in the process of creating/starting if it is not already done.
    • It is done when the Status is Active, the Task is None, and the Power State is Running
    • If you increased the size of your volume back at step 3.3, be sure to also increase the partition and filesystem
  5. Find your disk and partition with lsblk
    • Expand your partition e.g. sudo growpart /dev/vda 1
    • In the example vda is your disk and 1 is your partition number. Please note there is a space between disk and partition number
    • Verify the partition grew with lsblk. The size of your partition will now be bigger
    • Use df -h to verify the size of the file system.
    • If you have XFS, extend the XFS file system e.g. sudo xfs_growfs -d /
    • Verify the file system reflects the increase volume size by using df -h command again.
    • Enjoy your new Instance