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Expanding EBS Volume on an EC2 Instance without restarting

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Overview

If you’ve increased your AWS EBS volume size but it’s not reflecting inside your VM, follow these steps to make the new space available.

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Step 1: Verify the EBS Volume Size on AWS

Run the following command to check if the volume size has been updated on AWS: 
aws ec2 describe-volumes --volume-ids vol-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Step 2: Check if the OS Recognizes the New Size

Run the following command inside the VM: 
lsblk
Example output: 
nvme0n1      259:0    0   30G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0 19.9G  0 part /
├─nvme0n1p14 259:2    0    4M  0 part
└─nvme0n1p15 259:3    0  106M  0 part /boot/efi

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Step 3: Expand the Partition

Since the partition (nvme0n1p1) is still at 19.9GB while the disk is 30GB, you need to extend it using growpart: 
sudo growpart /dev/nvme0n1 1
Verify the change: 
lsblk

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Step 4: Resize the Filesystem

After expanding the partition, resize the filesystem.
  • For EXT4 Filesystem (Ubuntu/Debian): 
    sudo resize2fs /dev/nvme0n1p1
  • For XFS Filesystem (Amazon Linux 2, RHEL, CentOS 7+): 
    sudo xfs_growfs /

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Step 5: Verify the Disk Space

Check if the root partition reflects the new size: 
df -h
Example output: 
Filesystem       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root         29G   16G   13G  56% /
tmpfs            969M     0  969M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs            388M  912K  387M   1% /run
tmpfs            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/nvme0n1p15  105M  6.1M   99M   6% /boot/efi
tmpfs            194M  4.0K  194M   1% /run/user/0
Now your root volume is successfully resized to 30GB! 🚀