Category: ElasticFox

The ElasticFox Firefox extension allows you to tag EC2 instances, EBS volumes, EBS snapshots, Elastic IPs, and AMIs. ElasticFox’s tags are stored locally within Firefox, so if you use ElasticFox from more than one browser your tags from one browser are not visible in any other browser.  Also, if your browser crashes you may lose your tags – so back them up.

Manually Copy ElasticFox Tags
Use this method to manually copy ElasticFox tags for backup or copy to another machine.

1. Open about:config (enter about:config in address field of Firefox.
2. In the filter field enter the word, “tags.”
3. Copy entries with data in the value field such as:
1. ec2ui.eiptags…
2. ec2ui.instancetags…
3. ec2ui.volumetags…
4. ec2ui.snapshotTags…

See full article, which covers:

• How to Export ElasticFox Settings
• How to Import ElasticFox SettingsCopying ElasticFox Tags to Another Browser Manually
• Copying ElasticFox Tags to Another Browser with OPIE
• Copying ElasticFox Tags to Another Browser with Shell Scripts

Last week I wrote about The Maximum (EBS) Drives/Volumes for an EC2 Windows Instance.  In that I discussed the max I had discovered was 12.  While that is accurate, it is important to understand that was based on “instance-store” (or S3-backed) instances.  Since I’ve been working recently with EBS-backed Windows (2003 and 2008) instances I wanted to see what they could handle.

I started by creating about a dozen EBS volumes, then using ElasticFox I attached them to my Windows instance.  ElasticFox will auto-assign the device name – xvdh, xvdi, xvdj, and so on up to xvdp.  After that it will begin using xvdg, xvdf, xvde, etc.  After I had 14 total drives (Amazon calls them volumes, Windows calls them drives – therefore I am using the terms interchangeably) attached I received the message, “The request must contain the parameter device” and couldn’t attach any more.

Next I turned to Amazon’s AWS Management Console which displays a list of available devices.  However, it only displays xvdf – xvdp.

Since xvdd – xvdp were already in use, and I reasoned that the root volume was using xvda, I tried to manually use xvdc, and it worked.  I was also able to manually assign device xvdb.

At this point I had 16 EBS volumes (drives 0-15) attached to my Windows instance.

I was able to successfully reboot the instance and everything worked fine, unlike when I lost connectivity to the instance-store instance as described in my previous post.

Just for fun I tried to device names outside the specified range.  For example when I tried to use xvdq I received the message, “Value (xvdq) for parameter device is invalid.  xvdq is not a valid EBS device name.”

This all makes sense as “p” is the 16th letter in the alphabet.  Therefore, devices xvda – xvdp are available and usable on Windows 2003 and Windows 2008 Amazon EBS-backed instances.

I’ve been using ElasticFox for a while now and thought I’d jot down a few notes about it.  I don’t use it exclusively to manage my Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2 instances, EBS volumes, etc., but usually I do go there first.  It’s worth mentioning that I also use the AWS Management Console and EC2 command line tools (both in Windows and Linux).  Typically I keep ElasticFox open as I access it several times a day.

One of the best things about ElasticFox is that you can add “Tags” to instances, EBS volumes, etc.  Tags are your own notes about the instance, like a friendly name.  I really wish Amazon had a field like this that was tied to the instance so it would be available in all tools.  One minor draw-back to tags are that they only apply to the particular browser in which they are created.  They don’t, for example, if you logon as a different user to your machine, or on other machines.

With ElasticFox you can connect to various regions, even with different credentials.  It allows you to manage the following by selecting the appropriate tab:

• Instances
• Images
• KeyPairs
• Security Groups
• Elastic IPs
• Volumes and Snapshots
• Bundle Tasks
• Reserved Instances
• Virtual Private Clouds
• VPN Connections
• Availability Zones

Read more about and download the Elasticfox Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2 and enjoy.

See also Copying ElasticFox Tags from One Browser to Another.

UPDATE:

ElasticFox doesn’t support versions of FireFox above 3.x, so get Elasticfox (for EC2 Tag) which adds a few more nice features.