Storage - EBS

Question 1

What is EBS?

Answer 1

Is used for block level storage with EC2 instances

Question 2

Why would I use EBS?

Answer 2

Well suited for primary storage of file systems, databases or for any applications that require fine granular updates and access to raw, unformatted, block level storage

Question 3

What the max performance IOPs by volume type from fastest to slowest?

Answer 3

io2 Block Express = 256k

io2 & io1 = 64k

gp2 & gp3 = 16k

st1 (throughput HDD) = 500

sc1 (cold HDD) = 250

Question 4

What are the six (seven) different types of EBS volumes?

Answer 4

io2 Block Express (in preview) (SSD)

io2 (SSD)

io1 (SSD)

gp3 (SSD)

gp2 (SSD)

st1 (HDD)

sc1 (HDD)

Question 5

What is the max throughput by volume from greatest to least?

Answer 5

io2 Block Express = 4k MB/s

io2 & io1 = 1k MB/s

gp3 = 1k MB/s

gp2 = 250 k MB/s

st1 (throughput HDD) = 500 MB/s

sc1 (cold HDD) = 250 MB/s

4,750 - 7500 MB/s per instance

Question 6

List durability from greatest to least by volume type?

Answer 6

io2 Block Express & io2 = 99.999%

io1 , gp3, gp2, st1, sc1 = 99.8 - 99.9%

Question 7

What are the use cases for io2?

Answer 7

High performance SSD for business critical lantency sensitive applications

Question 8

What are the use cases for io1?

Answer 8

high performance SSD volume for latency-sensitive transactional workloads

Question 9

What are the use cases for gp3?

Answer 9

balances price and performance usually slated for virtual desktops, medium sized databases, low-latency interactive apps, dev & test , boot volumes

Question 10

What are the use cases for gp2?

Answer 10

general purpose SSD for a wide variety of transactional load for use in boot volumes, low latency interactive apps, dev & test

Question 11

What are the use cases for st1?

Answer 11

low cost HDD for frequently accessed, throughput-sensitive workloads used for big data, data warehouses, and log processing

Question 12

What are the use cases for sc1?

Answer 12

lowest storage cost, througput oriented, infrequently accessed data for cold data storage.

Question 13

List volume size by volume type?

Answer 13

io2 & io1 = 4GB - 16TB

gp3 & gp2 = 1GB - 16TB

st1 & sc1 = 1GB - 16TB

Question 14

What happens when my instance is terminated?

Answer 14

EBS volume can persist independently of the life of the instance. This can be set by selecting “no” for delete on termination.

Question 15

What is a snapshot?

Answer 15

a back up of EBS data at a point-in-time. Snapshots protect against the unlikely even of a volume failure.

Question 16

When can snapshots be conducted?

Answer 16

can be done in real time while the volume is attached, but only capture volume that has successfully been written to the volume, so in this cast detaching is recommended for a clean snapshot

Question 17

Why are snapshot know as incremental backups?

Answer 17

on the blocks on the device that have changed after your most recent snapshot are saved. This saves on storage cost and decreases the time to create a snapshot

Question 18

What are some limitations to snapshots?

Answer 18

are regional; can’t delete snapshot if it is the root device, it must first be deregistered; only 5 concurent snapshots are allowed per region; tags are not copied

Question 19

How is EBS encrypted?

Answer 19

offer data at rest, in transit between EC2 and EBS and snapshot encryption from a volume and from volumes created by a snapshot

Question 20

How can KMS be used to encrypt volumes?

Answer 20

master keys can be used when encrypted volumes and any snapshots created from your encrypted volumes

Question 21

How are volumes dealt with when restored by encrypted snapshots?

Answer 21

automaticall encrypted

Question 22

Can unencrypted volumes be encrypted? Can encryption be removed?

Answer 22

there is no direct way to encrypt a once unencrypted volume or remove encryption. But data can be migrated between unencrypted and encrypted volumes

Question 23

What is the EBS pricing model?

Answer 23

charged by the amount you provision in GB per month; detached volumes still incur a charge if the storage amount exceeds the free tier; only deletion of a volume can stop charges

Question 24

Why EBS over S3 and or EFS?

Answer 24

persistent block level storage; high performance for low-lantency workloads; higher than s3 file size max; higher than S3/EFS availability

Question 25

How is replication achieved with EBS?

Answer 25

via snapshots

Question 26

durability

Answer 26

stored redundantly in a single AZ

Question 27

Why wouldn’t you use EBS?

Answer 27

EBS cost more than S3 and is meant for EC2 instances only

Question 28

Does EBS allow for multi-attach?

Answer 28

Yes, but only for io1. Up to 16 Nitro instances can be attached in same AZ. Only available in us-east-1, us-west-2, eu-west-1, and ap-northeast-2 regions. Volume cannot be modified, enable ordisabled after creation