How to safely upgrade ec2 instance type in amazon web services? m4.large to m4.xlarge?

Question

We have created an instance (m4.large) where we installed Windows Server 2012 r2. It is currently used as a terminal server for SAP business one software with license Remote Desktop Service per device (CAL). We made a mistake in choosing the instance type for it is recommended to use m4.xlarge for terminal servers. We would like to upgrade our instance type to resolve memory requirement issue.

We are new to AWS and would like to seek advise on what would be our best approach. Is it safe to directly upgrade the instance? We have no concerns of downtime for now. We are also considering in making a snapshot first then launch it on an new and upgraded instance. We would like to ask if RDS licenses will also be migrated? Thanks you for your kind replies.

Answer 1

You can change instance type anytime, but the instance must be stopped. If you are not concerned with some minutes of downtime just stop the instance, change the instance type and start the instance. Taking a snapshot as a backup before and frequently is a good precaution.

This change will have no impact on RDS, as that is a separate service.

Answer 2

One way would be simply to stop instance and upgrade it.

Warning

When you stop an instance, the data on any instance store volumes is erased. Therefore, if you have any data on instance store volumes that you want to keep, be sure to back it up to persistent storage.

Any Amazon EBS volumes remain attached to the instance, and their data persists.

Any data stored in the RAM of the host computer or the instance store volumes of the host computer is gone.

Another Way if you want minimal Downtime is you can create an AMI of it and Spin up new instance with Instance type and size what ever you desire and assign the domain or Elastic IP of current instance to new one and terminate old instance.

Also Regarding The RDS Licensing Please Mention what you mean by upgrading , but there will an outage when you apply for instance upgrade or License is Modified.

Also Upgrading EC2 Instance has no affect on Existing RDS as both are different services.

For Reference on Ms SQL DB , Please read these AWS Documentation:

Modifying a DB Instance Running the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine

Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS

Answer 3

As m4.large is EBS backed instance. so the loss of data is not a concern in the above question. Just select->right click-> stop the instance and change the instance type to m4.xlarge by right click->instance settings->instance type.

Also for your second question RDS is a separate service, so it won't get affected.