/ SOFTWARE, BASH, EC2, LINUX, UBUNTU

Moving GitLab to an EBS Volume

I’ve really enjoyed using GitLab to manage my git repositories.

It was really easy to get started because I used a Bitnami GitLab image for Amazon. The problem is when I created the instance I chose an Instance store over EBS. I don’t have a really good reason why I did but now I need to move my data to its own volume so I can restart my instance with no fear of losing data.

  1. Check how much space you have

     df -h
 /dev/xvda1 9.9G 4.5G 4.9G 48% /

    /dev/xvda1 is the root device volume. 10 GB is the default for ephemeral.

    I’m at 50% and would like to have more room to grow. However, the real reason is I don’t want to lose my data.

  2. Create and Attach an EBS Volume

    You need to create the volume in the same available zone as the host computer in order to attach it. Take note of the device name when you attach it. We’ll need this name when we mount the volume.

  3. Format the Volume

    Find which volume is the new one with the list block devices command

     lsblk

 xvda1 202:1 0 10G 0 disk /
 xvdb 202:16 0 4G 0 disk /mnt
 xvdf 202:80 0 100G 0 disk

    xvdf is the new one because it doesn’t have a mount point associated with it. Format the drive:

     sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/xvdf

  4. Create a full backup of GitLab

    First stop the application using the bitnami ctrl script and move to a safe location:

     sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop
 sudo mv /opt /opt2

  5. Mount the volume

    Although the volume has been attached, it hasn’t been mounted yet. You can see this by running df again:

     df -h
 /dev/xvda1 9.9G 4.5G 4.9G 48% /

    However the list block devices command can see the volume.

     lsblk

 xvda1 202:1 0 10G 0 disk /
 xvdb 202:16 0 4G 0 disk /mnt
 xvdf 202:80 0 100G 0 disk
    • xvda1 is mounted as the root file system.
    • xbdb is 4 GB mounted as /mnt
    • We’ll mount the new drive to /opt
     sudo mkdir /opt
 sudo mount /dev/xvdf /opt

  6. Restart Gitlab

    Move data over to the new /opt drive and restart:

     cp -R /opt2/bitnami /opt
 sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh start

  7. Verify the volume and data

     df -h

 /dev/xvda1 9.9G 1.2G 8.3G 12% /
 /dev/xvdf 99G 3.6G 90G 4% /opt

    I now have 3.6GB moved from / to /opt and /opt is mounted to the /dev/xvdf volume.

References