# Resize The Disk Space of EC2 Instance (Zero Downtime)

**Looking for a step-by-step tutorial on how to increase disk space on your AWS EC2 instance?**

I get it, I spent a *lot* of time trying to find the perfect guide myself. So I wrote this to save *you* the trouble I went through. (Now this article is always a go-to solution for me too😎)

You’ve landed in the right place.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to resize your EC2 instance’s disk **without** detaching the volume or restarting the server(Easily). AWS provides a block storage solution, EBS, for the instance. EBS’ Elastic Volumes feature allows you to increase volume size while the volume is still in use, making the resizing process much easier and faster without any downtime of the server.

Before extending the size of your EBS volume, It’s good to take a backup of your data with EBS Snapshot. It’s the best practice as if anything goes wrong, you can always restore the data.

## Create Snapshot

To take a snapshot of your volume,

* Go to EBS volume attached to your instance from EC2 Dashboard.
    
* Click on **Actions** and **Create Snapshot.**
    
* Add the **description** value as you wish.
    
* You can add tags also.
    
* Click on **Create Snapshot**. It may take some time.
    

## Resize The EBS Volumes of EC2 Instance:

After creating a snapshot of your volume, now it’s time to increase your disk space.

Steps:

* First Go to **Services** > **EC2** > **Instances.**
    
* Go to the EBS volume attached to your instance.
    
* From **Actions** click on **Modify Volume.**
    
* Add your desired size, I will be replacing **8** with **30**.
    
* You’ll get a confirmation pop-up. Click on **Modify**.
    

### Resizing the EBS:

You have successfully added a new volume size to your instance, but you aren’t using the new volume size. For this, SSH to your server or instance and run: ***df -h***

Here, you can see our disk partition is still using 8GB. Check the partition size by running commands ***lsblk*** and ***blkid.1***

Here, `xvda1` is your current volume with **8GB** and `xvda` with **30GB.**

<aside> 📌 `*xvda1` or similar is for Xen Virtual Machine based server. For NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) solid-state drive (SSD) based device, it will be `nvme0n1p1` or similar.\*

</aside>

Now extend the partition:

```bash
# For xvda1 partition
$ sudo growpart /dev/xvda 1
# For nvme0n1p1 partition
$ sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1
```

And, extend the volume:

```bash
$ sudo xfs_growfs /dev/xvda1
$ sudo xfs_growfs /dev/nvme0n1p1
```

Type `df -h` to check the volume size, it must show 30GB.

In our case, since the file system is `XFS`, we have to use **xfs\_growfs** tool.

For file systems `ext4`, `ext2`, and `ext3` you have to use `sudo resize2fs /dev/xvda1` OR `sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p1`.

## Conclusion

In this way, the volume is now resized and ready to be used without any downtime.

Thank you!