[ubuntu-cloud] best way to migrate an ebs backed image between regions

[Eric Hammond]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2010, Jonathan Marston wrote:
> I found this guide for transferring:
 > 
http://blog.taggesell.de/index.php?/archives/85-Amazon-EC2-How-to-migrate-an-EBS-backed-image-from-US-to-EU-or-wherever.html
> Is this guide best practice for such a procedure?

I would stay away from using nc to transmit your private information 
over the open Internet as it does not encrypt in transit.  I don't know 
that the connections between EC2 regions are necessarily completely 
controlled by Amazon, so I'd recommend going through ssh or rsync on top 
of ssh.

I have written up some sample commands that implement one approach to 
copying an EBS boot AMI between regions:

   http://alestic.com/2010/10/ec2-ami-copy

I'd appreciate comments and feedback.

On 10/20/2010 02:09 PM, Scott Moser wrote:
 >  for maverick you'd need to take care to filesystem label

Scott, could you elaborate on what is needed here?  My tests were with 
older versions of Ubuntu.

> simply copying the entire block device as the blog suggests is probably
> the easiest way, but it would mean
> a.) if the volume is 40G in size with 4G used data, you're transferring
>     40G.
> b.) if the connection drops, you've no way to resume it.

c.) EBS snapshots include any touched blocks in the EBS volume. By 
copying all blocks, even unused ones, you are likely increasing the size 
of the EBS snapshot (though there is compression which may save space). 
  By copying the file system, you limit the EBS snapshot to only the 
important blocks with content.

--
Eric Hammond