Section 6 - EBS (Elastic Block Store)

Question 1

What is EBS Volume?

Answer 1

• EBS (Elastic Block Store ) is a network drive.
• Locked to an availability zone
• provisioned storage (size in GBs and IOPS) billed for all provision capacity

Question 2

Is EBS Multi-Attach possible (CCP answer)?

Answer 2

For CCP (Certified Cloud Practitioner) , one EBS can be only mounted to one EC2 instance. For associate level, multi-attach feature for some EBS.

Question 3

What happens to EBS when the associated EC2 is terminated?

Answer 3

By Default, root EBS volume is deleted and other attached EBS volume is not deleted. Deletion on termination is an attribute used to control the behavior.

Question 4

What does the Delete on Termination attribute on EBS do?

Answer 4

Controls the EBS behavior when an EC2 instance terminates. By default, root EBS is deleted and others are not deleted.

Question 5

What is EBS snapshots?

Answer 5

EBS snapshots are a backup (snapshot) of your EBS volume at a point in time. Once snapshotted, it can be copy across AZ or Regions?

Question 6

Do you need to detach an EBS volume to do a EBS Snapshot?

Answer 6

Although recommended to detach your EBS volume before snapshot, it is not necessary to detach volume.

Question 7

How can an EBS volume be used in other AZ or Regions?

Answer 7

EBS Volume can’t be used directly in other AZ or Regions. EBS Snapshot needs to be taken and then restored into another region or AZ.

Question 8

What is an AMI?

Answer 8

• AMI ( Amazon Machine Image) are customized EC2 instances with software , configuration , os, setup as you like.
• AMI allows for faster boot / configuration time
• AMI are built for a specific region

Question 9

What are the types of AMI from you can launch EC2 instance from?

Answer 9

• A public AMI: AWS provided
• Your own AMI: you make and maintain them yourself
• AWS Marketplace AMI: an AMI someone else made ( and potentially sells)

Question 10

How does the AMI work from start to end?

Answer 10

• Start an EC2 instance
• Customize it
• Stop the instance ( for data integrity)
• Build an AMI - this will also create EBS snapshots
• Launch instance from other AMIs

Question 11

What is EC2 Image Builder?

Answer 11

EC2 Image Builder is used to automate the creation of Virtual Machines or container images.

• automate the creation, maintain, validate and test EC2 AMIs
• can be scheduled
• Free service ( only pay for the underlying resources)
• Use case: build monthly patched AMI

Question 12

What is the basic EC2 Image Builder flow?

Answer 12

EC2 Image Builder -(create)-> builder EC2 Instance -(create)-> New AMI -> Test EC2 instance → AMI is distributed (can be multiple regions)

• builder EC2 Instance
  
  • build components applied
• Test EC2 Instance
  
  • Test suite is run

Question 13

What is EC2 Instance Store?

Answer 13

• EC2 Instance Store is a high-performance hardware disk.
  
  • EBS volumes are network drives with good but “limited” performance

Question 14

What are the attributes of EC2 Instance Store?

Answer 14

• Better I/O performance
• EC2 Instance Store lose their storage if they’re stopped (ephemeral)
• Good for buffer/cache/scratch data/temporary content
• Risk of data loss if hardware fails
• Backups and Replication are your responsibility
• i3 → types
  
  • i3.large, i3.xlarge, etc…

Question 15

What is EFS?

Answer 15

EFS (Elastic File System) is a managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on 100s of EC2…. Linux, multi-AZ, expensive, HA

Question 16

What are the attributes of EFS?

Answer 16

• Can be mounted on 100s of EC2
• EFS works with Linux EC2 instances
• Multi-AZ
• Highly available
• Scalable
• Expensive (3x gp2)
• pay per use
• no capacity planning

Question 17

What is the difference between EBS vs EFS?

Answer 17

• EBS
  
  • Single AZ
  • Single attachment
  • EBS snapshot to move between AZ
• EFS
  
  • Multi-AZ
  • Multi-attachment
  • Linux only

Question 18

Explain EFS Infrequent Access (EFS-IA)

Answer 18

• Storage class that is cost-optimized for files not accessed every day
• 92% lower cost
• Auto move your files to EFs-IA
• Enable EFS-IA with lifecycle policy
• Transparent to apps

Question 19

Explain Shared Responsibility Model for EC2 Storage

Answer 19

• AWS
  
  • Infrastructure
  • Replication for data for EBS volumes & EFs drives
  • Replacing faulty hardware
  • Ensure their employee cannot access your data
• Customer
  
  • Backup/snapshot procedure
  • data encryption
  • data on drivees
  • understanding risk of EC2 Instance Store

Question 20

What is Amazon FSx?

Answer 20

Amazon FSx (File Server) is a 3rd party high-performance file systems and fully managed.

Question 21

What are the 3 types of Amazon FSx?

Answer 21

• FSx for Lustre
• FSx for Windows File Server
• FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Question 22

Explain Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Answer 22

• Fully managed, highly reliable, and scalable Windows native shared file system
• Built on Windows File Server
• Supports SMB protocol & Windows NTFS
• Integrated with Microsoft Active Directory
• Can be access from AWS or your on-premise infrastructure

Question 23

Explain Amazon FSx for Lustre

Answer 23

• Fully managed, high-performance, scalable file storage for High Performance Computing (HPC)
• Lustre is derived from “Linux” and “cluster”
• ML, Analytics, Video Processing, Modeling
• Scales up to 100s GB/s, millions of IOPS, sub-ms latencies