AWS NVMe drivers
Amazon EBS volumes and instance store volumes are exposed as NVMe block devices on
Nitro-based instances. To fully utilize the performance and capabilities of Amazon EBS features
for volumes exposed as NVMe block devices, the instance must have the AWS NVMe driver
installed. All current generation AWS Windows AMIs come with the AWS NVMe driver
installed by default.
For more information about EBS and NVMe, see Amazon EBS and NVMe
in the Amazon EBS User Guide.
For more information about SSD instance store and NVMe, see
SSD instance store volumes for EC2 instances.
The following AMIs include the required NVMe drivers:
Amazon Linux 2
Amazon Linux AMI 2018.03
-
Ubuntu 14.04 or later with linux-aws
kernel
AWS Graviton-based instance types require Ubuntu 18.04 or later with linux-aws
kernel
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 or later
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 or later
CentOS 7.4.1708 or later
FreeBSD 11.1 or later
Debian GNU/Linux 9 or later
To confirm that your instance has the NVMe driver
You can confirm that your instance has the NVMe
driver using the following command.
-
Amazon Linux, RHEL, CentOS, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
$
modinfo nvme
If the instance has the NVMe driver, the command returns information about the
driver.
-
Amazon Linux 2 and Ubuntu
$
ls /sys/module/ | grep nvme
If the instance has the NVMe driver, the command returns the installed
drivers.
To update the NVMe driver
If your instance has the NVMe driver, you can update the driver to the latest
version using the following procedure.
-
Connect to your instance.
-
Update your package cache to get necessary package updates as follows.
-
For Amazon Linux 2, Amazon Linux, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
[ec2-user ~]$
sudo yum update -y
-
For Ubuntu and Debian:
[ec2-user ~]$
sudo apt-get update -y
-
Ubuntu 16.04 and later include the linux-aws
package, which
contains the NVMe and ENA drivers required by Nitro-based instances. Upgrade the
linux-aws
package to receive the latest version as
follows:
[ec2-user ~]$
sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade -y linux-aws
For Ubuntu 14.04, you can install the latest linux-aws
package as follows:
[ec2-user ~]$
sudo apt-get install linux-aws
-
Reboot your instance to load the latest kernel version.
sudo reboot
-
Reconnect to your instance after it has rebooted.
- PowerShell
-
If you are not using the latest AWS Windows AMIs provided by Amazon, use the
following procedure to install the current AWS NVMe driver. You should perform this
update at a time when it is convenient to reboot your instance. Either the install
script will reboot your instance or you must reboot it as the final step.
Prerequisites
PowerShell 3.0 or later
To download and install the latest AWS NVMe driver
-
We recommend that you create an AMI as a backup as follows, in case you need
to roll back your changes.
-
When you stop an instance, the data on any instance store volumes is
erased. Before you stop an instance, verify that you've copied any data
that you need from your instance store volumes to persistent storage,
such as Amazon EBS or Amazon S3.
-
In the navigation pane, choose Instances.
-
Select the instance that requires the driver upgrade, and choose
Instance state, Stop
instance.
-
After the instance is stopped, select the instance, choose
Actions, then Image and
templates, and then choose Create
image.
-
Choose Instance state, Start
instance.
-
Connect to your instance and log in as the local administrator.
-
Download and extract the drivers to your instance using one of the following
options:
-
Install the driver to your instance by running the
install.ps1
PowerShell script from the
nvme_driver
directory (.\install.ps1
). If you get
an error, make sure you are using PowerShell 3.0 or later.
-
(Optional) Starting with AWS NVMe version 1.5.0
, Small
Computer System Interface (SCSI) persistent reservations are supported
for Windows Server 2016 and later. This feature adds support for Windows
Server Failover Clustering with shared Amazon EBS storage. By default, this
feature isn't enabled during installation.
You can enable the feature when running the
install.ps1
script to install the driver by
specifying the EnableSCSIPersistentReservations
parameter
with a value of $true
.
PS C:\>
.\install.ps1
-EnableSCSIPersistentReservations $true
You can disable the feature when running the
install.ps1
script to install the driver by
specifying the EnableSCSIPersistentReservations
parameter
with a value of $false
.
PS C:\>
.\install.ps1
-EnableSCSIPersistentReservations $false
-
Starting with AWS NVMe 1.5.0
, the
install.ps1
script always installs the
ebsnvme-id
tool with the driver.
(Optional) For versions 1.4.0
, 1.4.1
, and
1.4.2
, the install.ps1
script
allows you to specify whether the ebsnvme-id
tool should be
installed with the driver.
-
To install the ebsnvme-id
tool, specify
InstallEBSNVMeIdTool ‘Yes’
.
-
If you don't want to install the tool, specify
InstallEBSNVMeIdTool ‘No’
.
If you don't specify InstallEBSNVMeIdTool
, and
the tool is already present at
C:\ProgramData\Amazon\Tools
, the package will
upgrade the tool by default. If the tool is not present,
install.ps1
will not upgrade the tool by
default.
If you don't want to install the tool as part of the package,
and want to install it later, you can find the latest version or
the tool in the driver package. Alternatively, you can download
version 1.0.0
from Amazon S3:
Download the ebsnvme-id
tool.
-
If the installer does not reboot your instance, reboot the instance.
- Distributor
-
You can use Distributor, a capability of AWS Systems Manager, to install the NVMe driver package
one time or with scheduled updates.
To install the latest AWS NVMe driver
-
For the instructions for how to install the NVMe driver package using
Distributor, see the procedures in Install or update packages in the Amazon EC2 Systems Manager User
Guide.
-
For Installation Type, select Uninstall and
reinstall.
-
For Name, choose AWSNVMe.
-
(Optional) For Additional Arguments, you can customize the
installation by specifying values. The values must be formatted using valid JSON
syntax. For examples of how to pass additional arguments for the aws
configure
package, see the Amazon EC2 Systems Manager documentation.
-
Starting with AWS NVMe 1.5.0
, the driver supports SCSI persistent
reservations for Windows Server 2016 and later. By default, this feature
isn't enabled during installation.
-
To enable this feature, specify {"SSM_EnableSCSIPersistentReservations":
"true"}
.
-
If you don't want to enable this feature, specify
{"SSM_EnableSCSIPersistentReservations":
"false"}
.
-
Starting with AWS NVMe 1.5.0
, the
install.ps1
script will always install the
ebsnvme-id
tool.
(Optional) For versions 1.4.0
, 1.4.1
, and
1.4.2
, the install.ps1
script
allows you to specify whether the ebsnvme-id tool should be installed
with the driver.
-
To install the ebsnvme-id tool, specify {"SSM_InstallEBSNVMeIdTool":
"Yes"}
.
-
If you don't want to install the tool, specify {"SSM_InstallEBSNVMeIdTool":
"No"}
.
If SSM_InstallEBSNVMeIdTool
is not specified for Additional
Arguments, and the tool is already present at
C:\ProgramData\Amazon\Tools
, the package will
upgrade the tool by default. If the tool is not present, the
package will not upgrade the tool by default.
If you don't want to install the tool as part of the package,
and want to install it later, you can find the latest version of
the tool in the driver package. Alternatively, you can download
version 1.0.0
from Amazon S3:
Download the ebsnvme-id
tool.
-
If the installer does not reboot your instance, reboot the instance.
After AWS NVMe driver version 1.5.0
or later has been installed, you
can enable or disable SCSI persistent reservations using the Windows registry for
Windows Server 2016 and later. You must reboot the instance for these registry changes
to take effect.
You can enable SCSI persistent reservations with the following command which sets the
EnableSCSIPersistentReservations
to a value of 1
.
PS C:\>
$registryPath = "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AWSNVMe\Parameters\Device"
Set-ItemProperty -Path $registryPath -Name EnableSCSIPersistentReservations -Value 1
You can disable SCSI persistent reservations with the following command which sets the
EnableSCSIPersistentReservations
to a value of 0
.
PS C:\>
$registryPath = "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AWSNVMe\Parameters\Device"
Set-ItemProperty -Path $registryPath -Name EnableSCSIPersistentReservations -Value 0