Elastic Block Storage(EBS)

allows you to create storage volumes and attach them to EC2. Once attached, you can create a file system on top of these volumes, run a database, or use them in any other way you would use a block device.

EBS types

1 SSD

• General Purpose(gp2): balance both price & performance, 3–3000 IOPS
• Provisioned IOPS(io1): for high I/O intensive such as large RDS or NoSQL databases, >10.000 IOPS

2 Magnetic

• Throughput Optimized HDD(st1): for big data, data warehouse, log processing & can not be boot volume.
• Cold HDD(sc1): low cost for infrequently access, file server & can not be boot volume.
• Magnetic standard: lowest cost

EBS vs Instance Store

EBS vs Instance Store

1. EBS

• We can start and stop the instance.
• Data will persist if you reboot your system.

2. Instance Store

• We cannot stop instances.
• Data will be lost when instances terminate.

Snapshot

• backup and restore tool
• A snapshot will be created immediately but not already until it transferred to S3.
• If taking a snapshot of root volume, EC2 must stop first.
• You can take a snapshot while the instance still running.
• The snapshot will save the same region with instances.
• If you want to restore to another region, you must copy the snapshot first.
• The encrypted snapshot when restore will also be encrypted.