EBS Flashcards
This deck aims to help retain concepts related to the AWS EBS service.
What is direct (local) storage for an EC2 instance?
Instance store (storage that is directly connected to the EC2 host)
What file-level computer data storage server is connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients?
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
What are the main considerations when choosing between an instance store and an EBS volume for an EC2 instance?
EBS: Persistence (to avoid data loss), resilience (to avoid hardware failure), instance lifecycle isolation
Instance Store: Best performance, included in the price (makes sense to utilize them)
What are the main considerations to keep in mind when using an EC2 instance store?
- Temporary (data can be lost, ephemeral0, ephemeral1, …)
- Highest storage performance
- Included in the instance price
- Attached at launch only
Is the EC2 Instance Store a persistent storage solution?
No, the EC2 instance store is temporary (ephemeral) storage (EBS volumes are used as a persistent storage solution)
What type of storage is represented as a file share, a ready-made file system with a structure, mountable, but not bootable?
File Storage (e.g. EFS using NFS protocol, FSx for Windows File Server using SMB protocol)
What computer network provides consolidated, block-level data storage access?
Storage Area Network (SAN)
What type of storage is represented as a collection of addressable blocks, with no structure, mountable, bootable, with the file system created on top by the OS?
Block Storage (e.g. EBS using iSCSI protocol)
What is the preferred number of bytes the file system uses to read and write files?
IO Block (commonly 4096 bytes)
What abstract system enables customers to store their data in its native format, thus any type of data can be stored in it, has a flat structure, is not mountable, and is not bootable?
Object Storage (e.g. S3 using HTTPS protocol)
What measures the number of read and write operations a storage device can perform in one second?
Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS)
What scalable and high-performance storage service is designed to provide block storage capability for EC2 instances?
Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
What measures the amount of data transferred to and from the storage device per second?
Throughput (IO block * IOPS = throughput)
Can EBS volumes be encrypted?
Yes, using the KMS service
What is the resiliency posture of the EBS service?
EBS is an Availability Zone-resilient service
Once the EC2 instance is terminated, is the EBS volume also deleted?
No, EBS volumes are persistent and not linked to the instance lifecycle
How do you create a copy of an EBS volume in another region?
You can create EBS volume snapshots, which are stored in S3, a region-resilient service, and then snapshots can be copied to another region and used to create an EBS volume from the snapshot
Can an EC2 instance format an EBS volume with a file system?
Yes, once mounted, the EC2 instance OS can format the EBS volume with a file system such as Ext4 for Linux instances or NTFS for Windows instances
What EBS volume types are there?
- SSD General Purpose (gp2, gp3)
- SSD Provisioned IOPS (io1, io2)
- HDD (st1, sc1)
Name the EBS volume type considering the following characteristics:
Durability: 99.8% - 99.9%
Volume Size: 1 GiB - 16 TiB
Max IOPS: 16,000 (16 KiB I/O)
Max Throughput: 250 MiB/s
Ratio: 3 IOPS per GB
gp2 (General Purpose)