AWS EBS Flashcards

1
Q

What does EBS stand for?

A

Elastic Block Storage

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2
Q

What are EBS Volumes?

A

Storage volumes you can attach to your EC2 instances.

You use them the same way you would use any system disk:
. Create a file system
. Run a database
. Run an operating system
. Store data
. Install applications
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3
Q

What are EBS Volumes used for?

A
You use them the same way you would use any system disk:
. Create a file system
. Run a database
. Run an operating system
. Store data
. Install applications
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4
Q

EBS volumes are used for what mission critical reasons?

A
  1. Production Workloads
    Designed for mission-critical workloads.
  2. Highly Available
    Automatically replicated within a single Availability Zone to protect against hardware failures.
  3. Scalable
    Dynamically increase capacity and change the volume type with no downtime or performance impact to your live systems.
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5
Q

What are the 4 types of EBS SSD Volumes?

A
  1. gp2
  2. gp3
  3. io1
  4. io2
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6
Q

This EBS SSD volume type is:
. Suitable for boot disks and general applications
. Provides up to 16K IOPS per volume
. Provides up to 99.9% durability

A

gp2 - General Purpose SSD

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7
Q

This EBS SSD volume type is:
. Suitable for high performance applications
. Provides predictable 3K IOPS baseline performance and 125 MiB/s regardless of volume size.
. Provides up to 99.9% durablility

A

gp3 - General Purpose SSD

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8
Q
This EBS SSD volume type is:
. Suitable for OLTP and latency-sensitive applications
. Provides 50 IOPS/GiB
. Provides up to 64K IOPS per volume
. High performance and most expensive
. Up to 99.9% durability
A

io1 - Provisioned IOPS SSD

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9
Q

This EBS SSD volume type is:
. Suitable for OLTP and latency-sensitive applications
. Provides 500 IOPS/GiB
. Provides up to 64K IOPS per volume
. Up to 99.999% durability
. Latest generation Provisioned IOPS volume

A

io2 - Provisioned IOPS SSD

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10
Q

What is the purpose of an EBS HDD volume?

A

To provide highly available and scalable storage volumes that you can attach to an EC2 instance.

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11
Q

What are the 2 EBS HDD volume types?

A

st1 - Throughput Optimized HDD

sc1 - Cold HDD

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12
Q

What does the EBS HDD volume type “st1” provide?

A
st1 is a Throughput Optimized HDD.
. Suitable for big data, data warehouses and ETL
. Max throughput is 500 MiB/s per volume
. Cannot be a boot volume
. Up to 99.9% durability
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13
Q

What does the EBS HDD volume type “sc1” provide?

A
sc1 - Cold HDD
. Max throughput of 250 MiB/s per volume
. Less frequently access data
. Cannot be a boot volume
. Lowest cost
. Up to 99.9% durability
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14
Q

For EBS Volumnes and Snapshots, where are the volumes and snapshots stored?

A

Volumes exist on the EBS (Elastic Bock Storage).

Snapshots exist on S3.

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15
Q

______________ are point-in-time photographs of volumes and are incremental by nature.

A

Snapshots

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16
Q

True or False: The first Snapshot you create will take very little time.

A

False, the first snapshot will take some time to create. The larger the instance being initially snapshot, the longer the time to take it.

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17
Q

For consistent snapshots, you should _______.

A

For consistent snapshots, you should stop the instance and detach the volume.

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18
Q

In order to share snapshots between AWS accounts as well as between regions, you need to do this.

A

First, copy the snapshot to the target region.

19
Q

True or False; You can resize EBS volumes on the fly as well as changing the volume types.

A

True

20
Q

What are Volumes?

A

Volumes exist on EBS.

Volumes are simply virtual hard disks. You need a minimum of 1 volume per EC2 instance. This is called the root device volume.

21
Q

What do you call the 1st default volume on an EC2 instance?

A

Root device volume.

22
Q

What are the 4 key points regarding Snapshots?

A
  1. Snapshots exist on S3
  2. Snapshots are point in time.
  3. Snapshots are incremental.
  4. The first snapshot may take some time to create as there is no previous point-in-time copy.
23
Q

What are the 3 tips for Snapshots?

A
  1. Consistent Snapshots
    Snapshots only capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume, which might exclude any data that has been locally cached by your application or OS. For a consistent snapshot, it is recommend you stop the instance and take a snap.
  2. Encrypted Snapshots
    If you take a snapshot of an encrypted EBS volume, the snapshot will be encrypted automatically.
  3. Sharing Snapshots
    You can share snapshots, but only in the region in which they were created. To share to other regions, you will need to copy them to the destination region first.
24
Q

Describe the feature “Consistent Snapshots”.

A

Consistent Snapshots
Snapshots only capture data that has been written to your Amazon EBS volume, which might exclude any data that has been locally cached by your application or OS. For a consistent snapshot, it is recommend you stop the instance and take a snap.

25
Q

Describe the feature “Encrypted Snapshots”.

A

Encrypted Snapshots

If you take a snapshot of an encrypted EBS volume, the snapshot will be encrypted automatically.

26
Q

Describe the feature “Sharing Snapshots”.

A

Sharing Snapshots
You can share snapshots, but only in the region in which they were created. To share to other regions, you will need to copy them to the destination region first.

27
Q

True or False: Your EBS volumes can be in a different AZ as the EC2 instance to which it is attached.

A

FALSE.

EBS volumes will always be in the same AZ as EC2.

Your EBS volumes will always be in the same AZ as the EC2 instance to which it is attached.

28
Q

True or False: You can resize EBS volumes on the fly.

A

TRUE.

You can resize EBS volumes on the fly. You do not need to stop or restart the instance. However, you will need to extend the filesystem in the OS so the OS can see the resized volume.

29
Q

What do you need to do after you’ve resized an EBS volume?

A

You will need to extend the filesystem in the OS so the OS can see the resized volume.

30
Q

Are you allowed to switch volume types?

A

YES

You can change volume types on the fly (e.g. go from gp2 to io2). You do not need to stop or restart the instance.

31
Q

Why would you consider hibernating an EC2 instance over stopping and starting it?

A

You have an application that takes a long time to load. Hibernating the instance prevents you from having to reload it.

32
Q

You’ve been tasked with creating a highly performant database on your EC2 instance. What type of EBS volume will support the high level of IOPS that you require?

A

Provisioned IOPS

33
Q

True or False? Amazon FSx for Lustre can’t store data directly on Amazon S3.

A

False:
Amazon FSx for Lustre file systems can be linked to Amazon S3 buckets, allowing you to access and process data concurrently from both a high-performance file system and from the S3 API.

34
Q

What is the best way to protect the data on your EBS volume at rest and during transit?

A

Encrypt the volume.

35
Q

You just took a snapshot of an EBS volume. Where is it stored?

A

S3.

36
Q

In EBS, how do you encrypt volumes?

A
  1. Create a snapshot of the unencrypted root device volume.
  2. Create a copy of the snapshot and select the encrypt option.
  3. Create an AMI from the encrypted snapshot.
  4. Use that AMI to launch new encrypted instances.
37
Q

Encrypted volumes have these features:

A
  1. Data at rest is encrypted inside the volume.
  2. All data in flight moving between the instance and the volume is encrypted.
  3. All snapshots are encrypted.
  4. All volumes created from the snapshot are encrypted.
38
Q

Define EBS Encryption & how it works.

A

EBS encrypts your volume with a data key using the industry standard AES-256 algorithm. Amazon EBS encryption uses AWS Key Management Services (AWS KMS) customer master keys (CMK) when creating encrypted volumes and snapshots.

39
Q

What happens when you encrypt an EBS volume?

A
  1. Data at rest is encrypted inside the volume.
  2. All data in flight moving between the instance and the volume is encrypted.
  3. All snapshots are encrypted.
  4. All volumes created from the snapshot are encrypted.
40
Q

Is EBS encryption and decryption handled transparently?

A

Yes. EBS encryption and decryption is handled transparently and you don’t need to do anything to ensure data is encrypted.

41
Q

True or False: Encryption in EBS causes moderate impact on latency.

A

False. Encryption has a minimal impact on latency.

42
Q

Are you can to copy an unencrypted snapshot and encrypt it?

A

Yes. Copying an unencrypted snapshot allows encryption.

43
Q

True or False: Snapshots of encrypted volumes are unencrypted.

A

False. Snapshots of encrypted volumes are encrypted.

44
Q

Can you encrypt root device volumes upon creation?

A

Yes, you can now encrypt root device volumes upon creation.