EC2 Instance Storage

Question 1

What does EBS standfor?

Answer 1

Elastic Block Store

Question 2

How many EC2 instances can an EBS volume be mounted to at one time?

Answer 2

One

Question 3

Are EBS volumes global or availability zone bounded?

Answer 3

Availability zone

Question 4

What attribute determines what will happen to an EBS volume attached to an EC2 instance once it is deleted?

Answer 4

Delete on termination attribute (default ON root, OFF other)

Question 5

How can you make a backup of an EBS volume?

Answer 5

Use snapshots (they can be used to move EBS volumes between az’s/regions)

Question 6

What feature can make storing EBS snapshots cheaper?

Answer 6

EBS Snapshot Archive

Question 7

What happens if you accidently delete a snapshot?

Answer 7

Check the recycle bin for EBS snapshots

Question 8

What is an AMI?

Answer 8

Amazon Machine Image are a customization of EC2 with preinstalled software and configuration

Question 9

Are AMI’s build for global, specific regions, or specific az’s?

Answer 9

Specific regions

Question 10

Is EBS a physical or network drive?

Answer 10

Network drive

Question 11

Is EC2 Instance Store a physical or network drive?

Answer 11

Physical

Question 12

Justify when you would pick an EBS volume over and EC2 instance store?

Answer 12

1. Cheaper
2. Can be configured to not be deleted when EC2 instance is deleted
3. Can be disconnected and attached to other EC2 instances

Question 13

Justify when you would pick an EC2 instance store over an EBS volume?

Answer 13

1. Need high performance (like for a short term cache)
2. Don’t care that storage will be lost of EC2 instance is deleted

Question 14

Describe the gp2/gp3 EBS volume type

Answer 14

General purpose SSD volume with balanced price/performance

Question 15

Describe the io1/io2 Block Express EBS volume type

Answer 15

High performance SSD volume for mission critical low latency high throughput workloads

Question 16

Describe the st1 EBS volume type

Answer 16

Low cost HDD volume for frequently accessed throughput intensive workloads

Question 17

Describe the sc1 EBS volume

Answer 17

Lowest cost HDD volume for infrequent access workloads

Question 18

Which EBS volume types can be used for boot volumes (and which cant)?

Answer 18

Only gp2/gp3 and io1/io2 can be used. st1 and sc1 cannot be used

Question 19

What is the difference between gp2 and gp3?

Answer 19

gp3 allows you to increase IOPS and throughput independently whereas gp2 have IOPS and throughput linked

Question 20

What feature allows you to attach a volume to multiple EC2 instances in the same AZ and what family of storage is it applicable for? What is the maximum number of EC2 instances it can connect to?

Answer 20

EBS Multi-Attach is a feature the io1/io2 storage type and 16 is the maximum number of instances.

Question 21

What is Amazon EFS?

Answer 21

A managed network file system that can mounted on many EC2 instances across multiple availability zones

Question 22

What operating systems is EFS compatible with?

Answer 22

Linux

Question 23

What are the two different performance modes for EFS?

Answer 23

1. General purpose - Latency sensitive
2. Max I/O - Higher latency higher throughput

Question 24

What are the three different throughput modes for EFS

Answer 24

1. Bursting - Throughput and storage linked
2. Provisioned - Throughput and storage not linked
3. Elastic - Automatically scales

Question 25

What are the three different storage tiers for EFS and what can you configure to move data between the storage tiers?

Answer 25

You can configure lifecycle policies to move files between the 3 following storage tiers:
1. Standard - Frequently accessed files
2. Infrequent access (EFS-IA)
3. Archive - Rarely accessed data