Why do I get the error "The service is unavailable. Please try again shortly" when modifying my Amazon EBS volume?

Resolution

When you're modifying an Amazon EBS volume, you might get the error "The service is unavailable. Please try again shortly." This error occurs because an operational activity is being performed on the systems that host your volume. The operational activity doesn't affect your volume performance or availability. You can continue to read or write during the operational activity. However, you can't modify your volume.

You can view notifications about the AWS services that you use by logging in to the AWS Health Dashboard. You receive notifications on the dashboard when an operation for an AWS service begins and another one after the operation is complete. Continue to monitor the dashboard until you receive the notification that the operation is complete. Then, you can begin modifying your volume.

If you can't wait until the operation is complete, then you can create a new volume with your desired size and performance. After you create the new volume, restore the data from the snapshot of your existing volume. For more information, see Replace a volume using a previous snapshot. If you don't have a snapshot of your volume, then see Create Amazon EBS snapshots.