Amazon EC2 | Storage Optimized Instances Flashcards
Can T2 instances be purchased as Reserved Instances or Spot Instances?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
T2 instances can be purchased as On-Demand Instances, Reserved Instances or Spot Instances.
What is a Dense-storage Instance?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
Dense-storage instances are designed for workloads that require high sequential read and write access to very large data sets, such as Hadoop distributed computing, massively parallel processing data warehousing, and log processing applications. The Dense-storage instances offer the best price/GB-storage and price/disk-throughput across other EC2 instances.
How do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances compare to High I/O instances?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
High I/O instances (I2) are targeted at workloads that demand low latency and high random I/O in addition to moderate storage density and provide the best price/IOPS across other EC2 instance types. Dense-storage instances (D2) and HDD-storage instances (H1) are optimized for applications that require high sequential read/write access and low cost storage for very large data sets and provide the best price/GB-storage and price/disk-throughput across other EC2 instances.
How much disk throughput can Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances deliver?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
The largest current generation of Dense-storage instances, d2.8xlarge, can deliver up to 3.5 GBps read and 3.1 GBps write disk throughput with a 2 MiB block size. The largest H1 instances size, h1.16xlarge, can deliver up to 1.15 GBps read and write. To ensure the best disk throughput performance from your D2 instances on Linux, we recommend that you use the most recent version of the Amazon Linux AMI, or another Linux AMI with a kernel version of 3.8 or later that supports persistent grants - an extension to the Xen block ring protocol that significantly improves disk throughput and scalability.
Do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances provide any failover mechanisms or redundancy?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
The primary data storage for Dense-storage instances is HDD-based instance storage. Like all instance storage, these storage volumes persist only for the life of the instance. Hence, we recommend that you build a degree of redundancy (e.g. RAID 1/5/6) or use file systems (e.g. HDFS and MapR-FS) that support redundancy and fault tolerance. You can also back up data periodically to more durable data storage solutions such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for additional data durability. Please refer to Amazon S3 for reference.
How do Dense-storage and HDD-storage instances differ from Amazon EBS?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
Amazon EBS offers simple, elastic, reliable (replicated), and persistent block level storage for Amazon EC2 while abstracting the details of the underlying storage media in use. Amazon EC2 instance storage provides directly attached non-persistent, high performance storage building blocks that can be used for a variety of storage applications. Dense-storage instances are specifically targeted at customers who want high sequential read/write access to large data sets on local storage, e.g. for Hadoop distributed computing and massively parallel processing data warehousing.
Can I launch H1 instances as Amazon EBS-optimized instances?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
Each H1 instance type is EBS-optimized by default. H1 instances offer 1,750 Mbps to 14,000 Mbps to EBS above and beyond the general-purpose network throughput provided to the instance. Since this feature is always enabled on H1 instances, launching a H1 instance explicitly as EBS-optimized will not affect the instance’s behavior.
Can I launch D2 instances as Amazon EBS-optimized instances?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
Each D2 instance type is EBS-optimized by default. D2 instances 500 Mbps to 4,000 Mbps to EBS above and beyond the general-purpose network throughput provided to the instance. Since this feature is always enabled on D2 instances, launching a D2 instance explicitly as EBS-optimized will not affect the instance’s behavior.
Are HDD-storage instances offered in EC2 Classic?
Storage Optimized Instances
Amazon EC2 | Compute
The current generation of HDD-storage instances (H1 instances) can only be launched in Amazon VPC. With Amazon VPC, you can leverage a number of features that are available only on the Amazon VPC platform – such as enabling enhanced networking, assigning multiple private IP addresses to your instances, or changing your instances’ security groups. For more information about the benefits of using a VPC, see Amazon EC2 and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).
