EBS Volume for Neo4j

OS: Linux 

Software: Neo4j

Step 1:

• Create an EBC Volume: (Type GP2)

• EBS volume should be in exact same region and sub region as the instance you wish to mount

• Reference Link : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-creating-volume.html

Step 2:

• Attach EBS Volume to Instance:

• From volumes section - attach the volume to the instance

• Reference Link :http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-attaching-volume.html

Step 3:

• Mount the drive on that instance:

  Login to your ec2 instance and list the available disks using the following command

  1. Lsblk

        2. Check if the volume has any data using the following command

               sudo file -s /dev/xvdf

        3. If the above command output shows “/dev/xvdf: data”, it means your volume is empty

        4. Format the volume to ext4 filesystem  using the following command

               sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/xvdf

        5. Create a directory of your choice to mount our new ext4 volume. For Example the name used is “newvolume”

               sudo mkdir /newvolume

        6. Mount the volume to “newvolume” directory using the following command

               sudo mount /dev/xvdf /newvolume/

        7. cd into newvolume directory and check the disk space for confirming the volume mount

               cd /newvolume

               df -h

Step 4: 

• Change neo4j.conf file to point to new mounted space
  1. Stop neo4j
  2. Uncomment line “dbms.directories.data=data”
  3. Change to “dbms.directories.data=/newvolume/data”

Step 5: 

• Verify neo4j
  1. Start neo4j
  2. Create nodes and verify data

Step 6:

• Unmount
  1. umount /dev/xvdf

Step 7:

• Detach EBS volume
  1. Go to EC2 Volume section
  2. Select the volume
  3. Under Action select detach, if that does not works go for Force detach

Step 8:

• Increase the size
  1. Go to EC2 Volume section
  2. Resize the volume by modifying the volume to desired levels

Step 9:

• Attach the volume to the new fresh instance
  1. From volumes section - attach the volume to the instance
  2. Reference Link : http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-attaching-volume.html

Step 10:

• Mount the volume to newly attached instance
  1. Follow step 3 above

Step 11:

• Neo4j conf updates and data verification
  1. Follow steps 5 and 6

Step 1:

• To make the extend size of EBS volume to be useful we need to resize it with formatting
  1. sudo resize2fs /dev/xvdf

Step 2:

• EBS Automount On Reboot
  1. Back up the /etc/fstab file
  2. sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
  3. Open /etc/fstab file and make an entry in the following format
  4. device_name mount_point file_system_type fs_mntops fs_freq fs_passno