EC2 Instance Storage

Question 1

What does EBS stand for?

Answer 1

Elastic Block Storage

Question 2

What is EBS?

Answer 2

EBS is a network drive that you can attach to your instances while they run. It allows you to keep data even after the instance’s termination.

Question 3

How many EC2 instances can an EBS volume mount to at once?

Answer 3

1

Question 4

How many EBS volumes can be attached to an EC2 instance at once?

Answer 4

More than 1

Question 5

How is billing handled for EBS volumes?

Answer 5

You are billed for provisioned capacity, regardless of if you use it

Question 6

What is the geographic level of an EBS volume? (Global/Regional/Zonal)

Answer 6

Zonal - bound to specific AZ

Question 7

What happens to the root EBS volume when an instance is terminated?

Answer 7

It is deleted by default

Question 8

What happens to an EBS volume that is not the root when an instance is terminated?

Answer 8

It is not deleted by default

Question 9

What is an EBS snapshot?

Answer 9

A backup of an EBS volume at a point in time

Question 10

How do you transfer EBS volumes across AZs?

Answer 10

By copying their associated snapshots across and then restoring

Question 11

Can you restore EBS volume snapshots that you deleted?

Answer 11

Yes, through the recycle bin

Question 12

What is Fast Snapshot Restore?

Answer 12

A feature that allows you to fully initialise your snapshot to have no latency on first use. This is expensive!

Question 13

What are AMIs?

Answer 13

Amazon Machine Images are customisations of EC2 instances that allow users to have faster boot and configuration times because their software is pre-packaged

Question 14

What are 3 components of an AMI that users can specify?

Answer 14

Configuration, OS, monitoring

Question 15

What is the name of the hardware device that is physically connected to an EC2 instance?

Answer 15

The instance store

Question 16

What is the pro and con of an EC2 instance store?

Answer 16

Very high performance (I/O) but ephemeral (data lost on stoppage)

Question 17

What type of drive are gp2 and gp3? What does gp stand for?

Answer 17

SSDs, general purpose

Question 18

What is the other name for provisioned IOPS SSDs?

Answer 18

io1/io2 Block Express SSDs

Question 19

What is special about io1 and io2 that no other EBS volumes have?

Answer 19

They support EBS multi-attach and therefore can be attached to multiple instances at once

Question 20

What is the lowest cost HDD volume?

Answer 20

sc1

Question 21

What is EBS multi-attach? What permissions does an instance attached to a volume in this way have on the volume?

Answer 21

Allows you to attach multiple EC2 instances to 1 io2/io3 EBS volume. All attached instances have full read/write permissions

Question 22

What 4 things are consequently automatically enabled when you encrypt an EBS volume?

Answer 22

• Encrypted data at rest
• Encrypted data in-flight to and from the instance
• All snapshots are encrypted
• All volumes created from the snapshots are encrypted

Question 23

What are the steps to encrypt an unencrypted EBS volume?

Answer 23

1. Create a snapshot of the EBS volume
2. Encrypt the snapshot
3. Create a new volume from the snapshot
4. Attach the new volume to the original instance

Question 24

What is Amazon EFS?

Answer 24

Elastic File Service is a managed network file system that can be mounted on many EC2 instances at once, across AZs

Question 25

How is security handled for an EFS?

Answer 25

Via a security group

Question 26

Is EFS compatible with Windows?

Answer 26

No - you would have to use FSx for Windows File Server

Question 27

What are the two EFS modes?

Answer 27

Performance mode and throughput mode

Question 28

What is the difference between performance mode and throughput mode for EFS?

Answer 28

• Performance mode is for general use, has high I/O
• Throughput mode is provisioned with bursting - you set your throughput requirements regardless of the storage size you have selected