Map NVMe disks on Amazon EC2 Windows instance to volumes

With instances built on the AWS Nitro System, EBS volumes are exposed as NVMe devices. This topic explains how to view the NVMe disks that are available to the Windows operating system on your instance. It also shows how to map those NVMe disks to the underlying Amazon EBS volumes and the device names specified for the block device mappings used by Amazon EC2.

List NVMe disks

You can find the disks on your Windows instance using Disk Management or Powershell.

Disk Management

To find the disks on your Windows instance

1. Log in to your Windows instance using Remote Desktop. For more information, see Connect to your Windows instance using RDP.

2. Start the Disk Management utility.

3. Review the disks. The root volume is an EBS volume mounted as C:\. If there are no other disks shown, then you didn't specify additional volumes when you created the AMI or launched the instance.

   The following is an example that shows the disks that are available if you launch an r5d.4xlarge instance with two additional EBS volumes.

   

PowerShell

The following PowerShell script lists each disk and its corresponding device name and volume. It is intended for use with instances built on the AWS Nitro System, which use NVMe EBS and instance store volumes.

Connect to your Windows instance and run the following command to enable PowerShell script execution.

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Copy the following script and save it as mapping.ps1 on your Windows instance.

# List the disks for NVMe volumes

function Get-EC2InstanceMetadata {
    param([string]$Path)
    (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "http://169.254.169.254/latest/$Path").Content 
}

function GetEBSVolumeId {
    param($Path)
    $SerialNumber = (Get-Disk -Path $Path).SerialNumber
    if($SerialNumber -clike 'vol*'){
        $EbsVolumeId = $SerialNumber.Substring(0,20).Replace("vol","vol-")
    }
    else {
       $EbsVolumeId = $SerialNumber.Substring(0,20).Replace("AWS","AWS-")
    }
    return $EbsVolumeId
}

function GetDeviceName{
    param($EbsVolumeId)
    if($EbsVolumeId -clike 'vol*'){
    
        $Device  = ((Get-EC2Volume -VolumeId $EbsVolumeId ).Attachment).Device
        $VolumeName = ""
    }
     else {
        $Device = "Ephemeral"
        $VolumeName = "Temporary Storage"
    }
    Return $Device,$VolumeName
}

function GetDriveLetter{
    param($Path)
    $DiskNumber =  (Get-Disk -Path $Path).Number
    if($DiskNumber -eq 0){
        $VirtualDevice = "root"
        $DriveLetter = "C"
        $PartitionNumber = (Get-Partition -DriveLetter C).PartitionNumber
    }
    else
    {
        $VirtualDevice = "N/A"
        $DriveLetter = (Get-Partition -DiskNumber $DiskNumber).DriveLetter
        if(!$DriveLetter)
        {
            $DriveLetter = ((Get-Partition -DiskId $Path).AccessPaths).Split(",")[0]
        } 
        $PartitionNumber = (Get-Partition -DiskId $Path).PartitionNumber   
    }
    
    return $DriveLetter,$VirtualDevice,$PartitionNumber

}

$Report = @()
foreach($Path in (Get-Disk).Path)
{
    $Disk_ID = ( Get-Partition -DiskId $Path).DiskId
    $Disk = ( Get-Disk -Path $Path).Number
    $EbsVolumeId  = GetEBSVolumeId($Path)
    $Size =(Get-Disk -Path $Path).Size
    $DriveLetter,$VirtualDevice, $Partition = (GetDriveLetter($Path))
    $Device,$VolumeName = GetDeviceName($EbsVolumeId)
    $Disk = New-Object PSObject -Property @{
      Disk          = $Disk
      Partitions    = $Partition
      DriveLetter   = $DriveLetter
      EbsVolumeId   = $EbsVolumeId 
      Device        = $Device 
      VirtualDevice = $VirtualDevice 
      VolumeName= $VolumeName
    }
	$Report += $Disk
} 

$Report | Sort-Object Disk | Format-Table -AutoSize -Property Disk, Partitions, DriveLetter, EbsVolumeId, Device, VirtualDevice, VolumeName

Run the script as follows:

PS C:\> .\mapping.ps1

The following is example output for an instance with a root volume, two EBS volumes, and two instance store volumes.

Disk Partitions DriveLetter EbsVolumeId           Device    VirtualDevice VolumeName
---- ---------- ----------- -----------           ------    ------------- ----------
   0          1 C           vol-03683f1d861744bc7 /dev/sda1 root
   1          1 D           vol-082b07051043174b9 xvdb      N/A
   2          1 E           vol-0a4064b39e5f534a2 xvdc      N/A
   3          1 F           AWS-6AAD8C2AEEE1193F0 Ephemeral N/A           Temporary Storage
   4          1 G           AWS-13E7299C2BD031A28 Ephemeral N/A           Temporary Storage

If you did not configure your credentials for Tools for Windows PowerShell on the Windows instance, the script cannot get the EBS volume ID and uses N/A in the EbsVolumeId column.

Map NVMe disks to volumes

You can use the Get-Disk command to map Windows disk numbers to EBS volume IDs.

PS C:\> Get-Disk
Number Friendly Name Serial Number                    HealthStatus         OperationalStatus      Total Size Partition
                                                                                                             Style
------ ------------- -------------                    ------------         -----------------      ---------- ----------
3      NVMe Amazo... AWS6AAD8C2AEEE1193F0_00000001.   Healthy              Online                   279.4 GB MBR
4      NVMe Amazo... AWS13E7299C2BD031A28_00000001.   Healthy              Online                   279.4 GB MBR
2      NVMe Amazo... vol0a4064b39e5f534a2_00000001.   Healthy              Online                       8 GB MBR
0      NVMe Amazo... vol03683f1d861744bc7_00000001.   Healthy              Online                      30 GB MBR
1      NVMe Amazo... vol082b07051043174b9_00000001.   Healthy              Online                       8 GB MBR

You can also run the ebsnvme-id command to map NVMe disk numbers to EBS volume IDs and device names.

PS C:\> C:\PROGRAMDATA\Amazon\Tools\ebsnvme-id.exe
Disk Number: 0
Volume ID: vol-03683f1d861744bc7
Device Name: sda1

Disk Number: 1
Volume ID: vol-082b07051043174b9
Device Name: xvdb

Disk Number: 2
Volume ID: vol-0a4064b39e5f534a2
Device Name: xvdc