Restoring an EBS Volume to get a functional server up

Question

I created a 'functional' simple standalone web-server on an ec2 instance backed by a 20GB EBS Volume. This volume is the root drive for the Linux server and hosts MySql, Apache and Tomcat.

Now, I shut this 1st instance down (didn't kill the EBS Volume) and want to use this Volume to get another web-server up (on a new EC2 instance). Even if I attach this volume as 2nd volume in the new EC2 instance, I don't get the webserver running, for obvious reasons.

Is there a way of making this volume as the primary disk volume so that I can start the webserver and other processes as is without having to set them up again?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can create a snapshot of the instance and launch a new instance from the snapshot.