Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)


EBS Volumes

  • AZ-level network drive that can be attached to EC2 instances while running
    • EC2 instances can have multiple EBSs attached
  • 30GB free for free-tier
  • Can be encrypted with a KMS key (AES-256) only when creating
    • If a running EBS needs to be encrypted, it needs to be snapshotted and created with encryption again
  • Delete on Termination
    • Root EBS volume is deleted by default
    • Additional EBS volumes are not deleted by default

EBS Volume Types

  • gp2/gp3(SSD): General purpose SSD volume
  • io1/io2(SSD): Highest-performance SSD volume
    • For applications that need more than 16K IOPS
    • io2 has more durability and more IOPS per GiB at the same price as io1
    • Supports EBS Multi-attach up to 16 instances
    • Must use a file system that’s cluster-aware (not XFS, EX4, etc…)
  • st1(HDD): Low-cost HDD volume
  • sc1(HDD): Lowest cost HDD volume
  • Only gp2/gp3 and io1/io2 can be used as boot volumes

EBS Snapshots

  • A backup(snapshot) of an EBS volume at a point in time
  • It is not necessary to detach volume to snapshot, but it is recommended
  • Can copy snapshots across AZs or Regions
  • Features
    • EBS Snapshot Archive
      • Move a Snapshot to an “Archive” that is 75% cheaper
      • It takes 24~72 hours to restore
    • Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots
      • Retention from 1 day to 1 year
    • Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR) $$$
      • Force full initialization of Snapshot to have no latency on the first use

References