Amazon EC2 - Create volume

Declaration

<AMAWSEC2 ACTIVITY="create_volume" PROVIDER="session_based" SESSION="text" ACCESSKEY="text" SECRETKEY="text (encrypted)" USERAGENT="text" MAXERRORRETRY="number" SERVICEURL="text" PROXYHOST="text" PROXYPORT="number" PROXYUSER="text" PROXYPWD="text (encrypted)" SIGNMETHOD="text" SIGNVERSION="number" SIZE="number" ZONE="text (encrypted)" SNAPSHOTID="text" RESULTDATASET="text" />

Related Topics     

Description

Creates a new Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) volume to which any EC2 instance can attach within the same availability zone.

IMPORTANT: All EC2 activities are performed using Amazon's EC2 engine and rely on a valid Amazon EC2 service account in order to function correctly.

Practical usage

Used to create a new EBS volume. Besides attaching the volume to any EC2 instance in the same availability zone, they can also be used as boot partitions for EC2 instances. A volume can only be attached to one instance at a time, but many volumes can be attached to a single instance.

Parameters

Connection

Property Type Required Default Markup Description
Connection --- --- --- --- Indicates where user credentials and preferences originate from. This parameter does not contain markup and is only displayed in visual mode for task construction and configuration purposes. The available options are:
  • Host (default) - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are configured individually for this activity. Normally chosen if only a single activity is required to complete an operation.
  • Session - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are obtained from a pre-configured session created in an earlier step with the use of the Amazon EC2 - Create session activity. Normally chosen if a combination of activities within the same action group are required. Linking several activities to a single session eliminates redundancy and improves efficiency. Several sessions can exist in a single task. Multiple sessions can run simultaneously without interference.
Session Text Yes, if the connection is set to Session EC2Session1 SESSION="EC2Session1" The name of an existing session to attach this activity to. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Session.
Access key Text Yes, if the connection is set to Host (Empty) ACCESSKEY="022QF06E7MXBSH9DHM02" A 20-character alphanumeric string that uniquely identifies the owner of the AWS service account, similar to a username. This key along with a corresponding secret access key forms a secure information set that AWS uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.
Secret access key Text Yes, if the connection is set to Host (Empty) SECRETKEY="kWcrlUX5JEDGM/LtmEENI/aVmYvHNif5zB+d9+ct" A 40-character string that serves the role as password to access the AWS service account. This along with an associated access key forms a secure information set that EC2 uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.
User agent Text No Automate USERAGENT="Automate" The name of the client or application initiating requests to AWS. The default value is Automate. 
Maximum number of retries on error Number No (Empty) MAXERRORRETRY="4" The total amount of instances this activity should retry the request before returning an error. Network components can generate errors anytime in the life of a request, thus, implementing retries can increase reliability. 
Service URL Text No (Empty) SERVICEURL="https://ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com" The URL that provides the service endpoint. To make the service call to a different region, you can pass the region-specific endpoint URL. For example, entering  https://ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com points to US West (Northern California) region. A complete list of EC2 regions, accompanying endpoints and valid protocols can be found below under EC2 regions and endpoints.
Proxy host Text No (Empty) PROXYHOST="proxy.host.com" The hostname (for example, server.domain.com) or IP address (for example, xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) of the proxy server to use when connecting to AWS.  
Proxy port Number No (Empty) PROXYPORT="1028" The port number to use to connect to the proxy server. 
Proxy username Text No (Empty) PROXYUSERNAME="Username" The username to authenticate with the proxy server.
Proxy password Text No (Empty) PROXYPWD="encrypted" The password to authenticate with the proxy server. 
Signature method Text No (Empty) SIGNMETHOD="HmacSHA256" The signature method to use for signing the request. This provides a valid hashing algorithm for signature calculation. Valid AWS signature methods are HmacSHA1 and HmacSHA256.
Signature version Number No (Empty) SIGNVERSION="2" The signature version for signing the request. Valid AWS signature versions are 2 and 4. The difference with version 4 is that it allows you to sign your message using a key that is derived from your secret access key rather than using the secret access key itself.

Volume

Property Type Required Default Markup Description
Volume Size (1-1024 GB) Number Yes if not creating a volume from a snapshot. (Empty) SIZE="800" The size of the volume, in GBs. Required if you are not creating a volume from a snapshot.
Availability zone Text (options) Yes No preference ZONE="us-east-1a" The availability zone in which to create the new volume. The available options are:

  • No Preference (default)

  • us-east-1a

  • us-east-1b

  • us-east-1c

  • us-east-1d

  • us-east-1e
Snapshot ID (Optional) Text No (Empty) SNAPSHOTID="snap-78a54011 The unique ID of the snapshot from which to create the new volume.
Create and populate dataset with EC2 volume information Text No (Empty) RESULTDATASET="myDataset" The name of a dataset in which to create and populate information regarding the EC2 volume being created. More details regarding the fields that this dataset creates can be found below under Datasets.

Description

Error Causes

On Error

Additional notes

EC2 regions and endpoints

This table contains a complete list of EC2 endpoints, accompanying regions and supported protocols.

Endpoint Region Protocol
ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com US East (Northern Virginia) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.us-west-2.amazonaws.com US West (Oregon) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com   US West (Northern California) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com EU (Ireland) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com Asia Pacific (Singapore) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Region HTTP and HTTPS
ec2.sa-east-1.amazonaws.com   South America (Sao Paulo) Region HTTP and HTTPS

Datasets

A dataset is a multiple column, multiple row container object. This activity creates and populates a dataset containing a specific set of fields in addition to the standard dataset fields. The table below describes these fields (assuming the dataset name assigned was "theDataset").

Name Type Return Value
theDataset.Attachment Text Returns the attachment identifier.
theDataset.AvailabilityZone Text Returns the availability Zone in which the volume was created.
theDataset.CreateTime Date Returns the time stamp when volume creation was initiated.
theDataset.Size Number Returns the size of the volume, in GBs.
theDataset.SnapshotId Text Returns the snapshot from which the volume was created, if applicable.
theDataset.Status Text Returns the volume state (that is, creating, available, in use, deleting, error).
theDataset.VolumeId Text Returns the volume identifier.

Example

NOTE:
  • Copy and paste the sample AML code below directly into the Task Builder Steps Panel.
  • To successfully run the sample code, update parameters containing user credentials, files, file paths, or other information specific to the task to match your environment.

Description

This sample task creates a 5 GB Amazon EBS volume and then stores the volume information into a dataset.

Copy 
<AMAWSEC2 ACTIVITY="create_volume" SIZE="5" ZONE="us-east-1b" RESULTDATASET="myData" />