Changing the size of your EBS-backed Windows EC2 instance in 5 easy steps

I’ve been playing with Jenkins recently and came to find out that the I3.large instance that I created for it doesn’t have enough CPU to satisfy my requirements. The instance is all configured, installed and happy, so now I just want MOAR POOTER!!!

Here is a step-by-step on how to do exactly that.

Note: this is proof of concept that I’m playing with – in a production environment you *ALWAYS BACKUP* your instance before making changes.

1. Stop your instance (either via AWS console or RDP/SSH in & shutdown)

   

2. From the AWS console – EC2 -> Instances -> select instance -> choose “Actions” dropdown -> Instance Settings -> Change Instance Type:

   

3. Select the new size that you want to change it to & click apply:

   

4. Turn your instance back on!

   

   

5. RDP in and confirm that your environment looks good (you see here that I now have 4 CPUs – which is the correct # for an I3.xlarge):

   

It’s that easy! Note that if you are not using an elastic IP address, your public facing DNS will change, so make sure you take that into consideration for production environments. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.