Is it possible to access the data stored on a volume or snapshot in Amazon EC2 without starting the instance that the volume is attached to? I have simulations that run overnight, followed by an alarm that stops the instance once the CPU drops below 15%. I'd like to be able to access the simulation output without restarting up the instance (avoiding excess costs and saving time). Is it possible? If so, how would I go about doing it?
Amazon has documentation describing the access of snapshots through Amazon Gateway:
Q: When I look in Amazon S3 why can’t I see my volume data? Your volumes are stored in Amazon S3 and accessible through AWS Storage Gateway. You cannot directly access them by using Amazon S3 API actions. You can take point-in-time snapshots of gateway volumes that are made available in the form of Amazon EBS snapshots. Use the file interface to work with your data natively in S3.
But I am unsure if this is referring to the same volumes that I am attaching to instances on EC2. Amazon does not go into further detail so I am hoping someone might have some insight.