The AWS Console also manages Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Storage) volumes. EBS is a relatively recent addition to the AWS family of services. Implemented in S3, an EBS volume is a persistent virtual disk drive that can be attached to a running AMI instance. EBS volume sizes can range from 1GB to 1TB, and the AWS console navigation pane's Volumes selection leads you to a page where volumes can be created, attached to instances, detached from instances, or deleted.

You conjure a volume by selecting the Create Volume button on the toolbar. Choose its size, availability zone, and whether you want a snapshot associated with it. A snapshot is an instant-in-time copy of the volume. It can serve as a backup copy of the volume, or you can use it as a mechanism for duplicating EBS volumes so that multiple, separate AMI instances can access (at least, initially) identical virtual drives.

Once an EBS volume is created, its status switches to Available. From the AWS Console, you select a running instance to attach the volume to, and the Console will indicate which drive letter (Windows) or disk device (Linux) the attached volume will map to. You must log in to the running instance to mount and format the volume, which is probably the most complicated step in the whole process. From that point on, the EBS volume behaves just as any attached disk drive would. There's not much to describe, because it's just that simple.

Accessible cloud

Amazon plans to extend the console beyond management of AMIs and EBS volumes. Future versions of the console should provide controls for other cloud-based services: the ability to create, delete, read, and write S3 buckets and objects; queries into simpleDB; management of Simple Queue Service (SQS) queues; and other facilities.