Wondering how to prevent Amazon EBS volumes from being deleted? We can help you.

Here, at Bobcares, we assist our customers with several AWS queries as part of our AWS Support Services.

Today, let us see how our Support Techs resolve this issue.

How to prevent Amazon EBS volumes from being deleted?

When an instance terminates, the value of the DeleteOnTermination attribute for each attached EBS volume determines whether to preserve or delete the volume.

By default, the DeleteOnTermination attribute is set to True for the root volume, and is set to False for all other volume types.

To preserve the root volume when an instance terminates, change the DeleteOnTermination attribute for the root volume to False.

How to set the DeleteOnTermination attribute to False when you launch a new instance?

Today, let us see the steps followed by our Support Techs to change the root volume of an instance to persist at launch using the console

• Firstly, open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.
• Then, from the console dashboard, select Launch Instance.
• Next, on the Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) page, choose an AMI and choose Select.
• Follow the wizard to complete the Choose an Instance Type and Configure Instance Details pages.
• On the Add Storage page, deselect the Delete On Termination check box for the root volume.
• Finally, complete the remaining wizard pages, and then choose Launch.

You can verify the setting by viewing details for the root device volume on the instance’s details pane.

Next to Block devices, choose the entry for the root device volume. By default, Delete on termination is True.

If you change the default behavior, Delete on termination is False.

How to set DeleteOnTermination attribute to False on running Instance?

If the instance is already running, you can set DeleteOnTermination to False using the command line.

Use the following command:

aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0 --block-device-mappings file://mapping.json

Specify the following in mapping.json:

[
{
"DeviceName": "/dev/sda1",
"Ebs": {
"DeleteOnTermination": false
}
}
]

[Need more help with Amazon error? We’d be happy to assist]

Conclusion

Today, we saw how our Support Techs resolved Amazon EBS volumes issue.