Adding an AWS gp3 disk device to a SoftNAS deployment: Best Practice

Symptoms

The SoftNAS® StorageCenter UI does not currently provide a way to create a gp3, only a gp2 is currently supported.  The gp3 provides significant performance over the gp2 at a lower cost point.

Purpose

This article provides the steps necessary to successfully create and integrate an AWS gp3 to SoftNAS that has been deployed on the AWS cloud platform.

Resolution

Creating a new gp3 to be added to an existing SoftNAS deployment:

  • Create an Amazon EBS volume provides an overview of the various types of EBS volumes are supported and includes the process on creating a gp3 volume through the use of the AWS EC2 Console as well as through the AWS CLI.


The new volume and Instance must reside in the same region.


During the creation a new SoftNAS deployment:

  • Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
  • Select Launch Instance.
  • From the AWS Marketplace, select the SoftNAS you wish to deploy.
  • During step 3, Add Storage, you can add a gp3 and have it be automatically configured with the new SoftNAS deployment.
  • Proceed with the normal deployment steps.

Additional Information

Introducing new Amazon EBS general purpose volumes, gp3

Amazon EBS volume performance on Linux instances

Migrate your Amazon EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 and save up to 20% on costs

Amazon EBS volume types

Constraints on the size and configuration of an EBS volume

Monitoring the progress of volume modifications


Outage required: (if applicable)

No - if creating a new gp3 and not migrating from an existing gp2.

Yes - if migrating from an existing gp2 to a gp3, it might take up to 24 hours depending on the amount of data being stored in the gp2.  According to Migrate your Amazon EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3 and save up to 20% on costs, a fully used 1 TiB volume takes about 6 hours to complete the migration.  


Length of Outage:(if applicable)

If migrating from an existing gp2, the outage depends on the amount of data being moved. (Google to determine if this is true or not).

Update History

11-17-2015 Template Created 
09-28-2021Article Created