Instance Store

AWS Storage Options – EBS & Instance Store

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 7 Comments

AWS Storage Options – EBS & Instance Store

  • Elastic Block Store – EBS and Instance Store provide block-level storage options for EC2 instances.

Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume

  • EBS provides durable block-level storage for use with EC2 instances
  • EBS volumes are off-instance, network-attached storage (NAS) that persists independently from the running life of a single EC2 instance.
  • EBS volume is attached to an instance and can be used as a physical hard drive, typically by formatting it with the file system of your choice and using the file I/O interface provided by the instance operating system.
  • EBS volume can be used to boot an EC2 instance (EBS-root AMIs only), and multiple EBS volumes can be attached to a single EC2 instance.
  • EBS volume can be attached to a single EC2 instance only at any point in time.
  • EBS Multi-Attach volume can be attached to multiple EC2 instances (up to 16 Nitro-based instances in the same AZ). Multi-Attach is supported on io1 and io2 Block Express volumes.
  • EBS provides the ability to take point-in-time snapshots, which are persisted in S3. These snapshots can be used to instantiate new EBS volumes and to protect data for long-term durability
  • EBS snapshots can be copied across AWS regions as well, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery
  • All EBS volume types are designed for 99.999% availability.

EBS Volume Types

  • Amazon EBS provides six volume types divided into two major categories:
    • SSD-backed storage for transactional workloads (databases, virtual desktops, boot volumes)
    • HDD-backed storage for throughput-intensive workloads (MapReduce, log processing)
  • General Purpose SSD (gp3) — baseline 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s at any size; scales up to 64 TiB, 80,000 IOPS, and 2,000 MiB/s (enhanced Sep 2025). Performance provisioned independently of capacity. 99.8%-99.9% durability.
  • General Purpose SSD (gp2) — burstable performance tied to volume size (3 IOPS/GiB, up to 16,000 IOPS). Being superseded by gp3 for new workloads.
  • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express) — highest performance block storage: up to 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MiB/s throughput, 64 TiB capacity, sub-millisecond latency. 99.999% durability (100X more durable than gp3). Supports Multi-Attach and NVMe reservations for shared storage fencing.
  • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) — previous generation Provisioned IOPS; up to 64,000 IOPS and 1,000 MiB/s. 99.8%-99.9% durability.
  • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) — low-cost HDD for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads; up to 500 MiB/s. Cannot be a boot volume.
  • Cold HDD (sc1) — lowest cost HDD for less frequently accessed workloads; up to 250 MiB/s. Cannot be a boot volume.
  • Magnetic (standard) — previous generation volume type with lower performance. AWS recommends migrating to current generation volume types.

Ideal Usage Patterns

  • EBS is meant for data that changes relatively frequently and requires long-term persistence.
  • EBS volume provides access to raw block-level storage and is particularly well-suited for use as the primary storage for a database or file system
  • EBS Provisioned IOPS volumes (io2 Block Express) are particularly well-suited for use with databases applications that require a high and consistent rate of random disk reads and writes, such as Oracle, SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL Server, and SAS Analytics.
  • gp3 volumes are ideal for a wide variety of workloads including virtual desktops, medium-sized databases, development/test environments, and boot volumes.
  • st1 volumes are ideal for big data, data warehouses, and log processing.
  • sc1 volumes are ideal for infrequently accessed cold data requiring lowest storage cost.

Anti-Patterns

  • Temporary Storage
    • EBS volume persists independent of the attached EC2 life cycle.
    • For temporary storage such as caches, buffers, queues, etc it is better to use local instance store volumes, SQS, or ElastiCache
  • Highly-durable storage
    • For highly durable storage, use S3 or Glacier which provides 99.999999999% (11 9’s) annual durability per object. EBS io2 Block Express offers 99.999% durability, while gp3/gp2/io1 offer 99.8%-99.9% durability.
  • Static data or web content
    • For static web content, where data infrequently changes, EBS with EC2 would require a web server to serve the pages.
    • S3 may represent a more cost-effective and scalable solution for storing this fixed information and is served directly out of S3.

EBS Performance

  • EBS provides multiple volume types that differ in performance characteristics and pricing, allowing you to tailor storage performance and cost to application needs.
  • EBS Volumes can be attached and striped across multiple similarly-provisioned EBS volumes using RAID 0 or logical volume manager software, thus aggregating available IOPS, total volume throughput, and total volume size.
  • gp3 volumes offer cost-effective storage with independently configurable IOPS and throughput. Baseline: 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s; scalable up to 80,000 IOPS and 2,000 MiB/s (as of Sep 2025).
  • io2 Block Express volumes deliver predictable, high performance for I/O intensive workloads: up to 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MiB/s throughput, with sub-millisecond latency. Supports 1,000 IOPS per GB provisioned.
  • As EBS volumes are network-attached devices, other network I/O performed by the instance, as well as the total load on the shared network, can affect individual EBS volume performance.
  • EBS-optimized instances deliver dedicated throughput between EC2 and EBS. Latest Nitro-based instances (e.g., C8gn, M8gn, R8gn in 48xlarge/metal sizes) support up to 120 Gbps EBS bandwidth and 480,000 IOPS (as of Apr 2026).
  • Each separate EBS volume can be configured independently with its own type and performance settings.

EBS Durability & Availability

  • EBS volumes are designed to be highly available and reliable.
  • EBS volume data is replicated across multiple servers in a single AZ to prevent the loss of data from the failure of any single component.
  • All EBS volume types are designed for 99.999% availability.
  • io2 Block Express volumes provide 99.999% durability (0.001% annual failure rate) — 100X more durable than other volume types.
  • gp3, gp2, and io1 volumes provide 99.8%-99.9% durability (0.1%-0.2% annual failure rate).
  • EBS snapshots are incremental, point-in-time backups, containing only the data blocks changed since the last snapshot.
  • Frequent snapshots are recommended to maximize both the durability and availability of EBS data.
  • EBS snapshots provide an easy-to-use disk clone or disk image mechanism for backup, sharing, and disaster recovery.

EBS Snapshots Archive

  • EBS Snapshots Archive offers up to 75% lower snapshot storage costs for snapshots stored for 90 days or longer that are rarely accessed.
  • Snapshots in the standard tier are incremental; when archived, they are converted to full snapshots and moved to the archive tier.
  • Archived snapshots can be restored to the standard tier when needed (restoration takes 24-72 hours).
  • AWS Backup now supports EBS Snapshots Archive in backup policies for automated lifecycle management.
  • EBS now displays full snapshot size information in Console and via DescribeSnapshots API (full-snapshot-size-in-bytes field, Feb 2025).

EBS Elastic Volumes

  • Elastic Volumes allows you to dynamically increase capacity, tune performance, and change the type of live volumes with no downtime or performance impact.
  • EBS volumes can be resized dynamically (increased only, cannot be reduced in size).
  • As of Jan 2026, EBS supports up to 4 Elastic Volumes modifications per volume within a rolling 24-hour window (previously limited to 1 modification per 6 hours).
  • Modifications include: increasing size, changing volume type, and adjusting provisioned performance (IOPS/throughput).

EBS Cost Model

  • EBS pricing varies by volume type:
    • gp3: charged per GB-month of provisioned storage, plus separately for provisioned IOPS (above 3,000) and throughput (above 125 MiB/s)
    • gp2: charged per GB-month of provisioned storage (IOPS included based on size)
    • io2/io1: charged per GB-month of provisioned storage and per Provisioned IOPS-month
    • st1/sc1: charged per GB-month of provisioned storage
  • EBS snapshots are charged per GB-month of data stored. Snapshots are incremental and compressed, so storage used is generally much less than volume size.
  • EBS Snapshots Archive tier costs up to 75% less than standard snapshot storage (minimum 90-day retention).
  • EBS snapshot copy is charged for data transferred between regions, plus standard snapshot charges in the destination region.
  • EBS volume storage capacity is allocated at creation time, and you are charged for allocated storage even if not fully used.

EBS Scalability and Elasticity

  • EBS volumes can easily and rapidly be provisioned and released to scale in and out with changing storage demands.
  • EBS volumes can be resized dynamically using Elastic Volumes (increase only, cannot be reduced).
  • Volume type and performance can be changed without detaching the volume or stopping the instance.
  • Up to 4 modifications are allowed per 24-hour rolling window.

Interfaces

  • AWS offers management APIs for EBS through REST-based APIs, AWS CLI, and SDKs, which can be used to create, delete, describe, attach, and detach EBS volumes, as well as to create, delete, and describe snapshots and copy snapshots across regions.
  • Amazon also offers the same capabilities through the AWS Management Console.
  • EBS Direct APIs allow you to read and write data directly to/from EBS snapshots without needing to attach them to an instance — useful for backup, disaster recovery, and data migration.

Instance Store Volumes

  • Instance Store volumes are also referred to as Ephemeral Storage.
  • Instance Store volumes provide temporary block-level storage and consist of a preconfigured and pre-attached block of disk storage on the same physical server as the EC2 instance.
  • Instance storage amount depends on the Instance type; larger instances provide both more and larger instance store volumes.
  • Modern instance store volumes use NVMe SSD storage on Nitro-based instances, delivering high random I/O performance with low latency.
  • Latest generation storage-optimized instances (2025-2026):
    • C8gd, M8gd, R8gd (Graviton4): up to 11.4 TB of NVMe SSD local storage, 3X more than previous generation
    • C8id, M8id, R8id (Intel Xeon 6): up to 22.8 TB of NVMe SSD local storage, 3X more than 6th-gen instances
  • Instance store volumes, unlike EBS volumes, cannot be detached or attached to another instance.
  • Data on instance store volumes persists only during the life of the associated EC2 instance — data is lost when the instance stops, terminates, or the underlying hardware fails.

Ideal Usage Patterns

  • EC2 local instance store volumes are fast, free (included in the price of the EC2 instance) “scratch volumes” best suited for storing temporary data that is continually changing, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, or data that is replicated for durability.
  • NVMe SSD-backed instances are ideally suited for many high performance database workloads. e.g., NoSQL databases like Cassandra, MongoDB, and real-time analytics.
  • High storage instances support much higher storage density per EC2 instance and are ideally suited for applications that benefit from high sequential I/O performance across very large datasets. e.g., data warehouses, Hadoop/Spark storage nodes, distributed file systems.
  • Machine learning training workloads that need fast local scratch storage for datasets and checkpoints.

Anti-Patterns

  • Persistent storage
    • For persistent virtual disk storage similar to a physical disk drive for files or other data that must persist longer than the lifetime of a single EC2 instance, EBS volumes or S3 are more appropriate.
  • Relational database storage
    • In most cases, relational databases require storage that persists beyond the lifetime of a single EC2 instance, making EBS volumes the natural choice.
  • Shared storage
    • Instance store volumes are dedicated to a single EC2 instance, and cannot be shared with other systems or users.
    • If you need storage that can be detached from one instance and attached to a different instance, or if you need the ability to share data easily, EBS volumes, EFS, or S3 are better choices.
  • Snapshots
    • If you need the convenience, long-term durability, availability, and shareability of point-in-time disk snapshots, EBS volumes are a better choice.

Instance Store Performance

  • EC2 instance virtual machine and the local instance store volumes are located on the same physical server, providing very fast access with low latency, particularly for sequential access.
  • Because the bandwidth to the disks is not limited by the network, aggregate sequential throughput for multiple instance volumes can be higher than for the same number of EBS volumes.
  • NVMe SSD instance store volumes provide from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of low-latency, random 4 KB IOPS.
  • To further increase aggregate IOPS or improve sequential disk throughput, multiple instance store volumes can be grouped together using RAID 0 (disk striping) software.
  • High storage instances are capable of delivering multi-GB/sec sequential read and write performance.
  • AWS provides detailed NVMe statistics for instance store volumes to help optimize latency-sensitive workloads (available 2025).

Instance Store Durability and Availability

  • EC2 local instance store volumes are NOT intended to be used as durable disk storage.
  • Data persists only during the life of the associated EC2 instance.
  • Data is lost when: instance is stopped or terminated, underlying disk drive fails, or instance hibernates.
  • Always replicate important data to EBS, S3, or other durable storage.

Cost Model

  • Cost of the EC2 instance includes any local instance store volumes if the instance type provides them.
  • While there is no additional charge for data storage on local instance store volumes, data transferred to and from instance store volumes from other AZs or outside an EC2 region may incur data transfer charges.
  • Additional charges apply for any persistent storage used (S3, Glacier, EBS volumes, EBS snapshots).

Scalability and Elasticity

  • Local instance store volumes are tied to a particular EC2 instance and are fixed in number and size for a given EC2 instance type.
  • Scalability and elasticity of this storage are tied to the number of EC2 instances running.

Interfaces

  • Instance store volumes are specified using the block device mapping feature of the EC2 API and the AWS Management Console.
  • To the EC2 instance, an instance store volume appears just like a local disk drive. Use the native file system I/O interfaces of the chosen operating system to read and write data.
  • On Nitro-based instances, instance store volumes are exposed as NVMe block devices.

EBS vs Instance Store Comparison

Feature EBS Instance Store
Persistence Persists independently of instance Ephemeral — lost on stop/terminate
Network Network-attached Physically attached (local)
Snapshots Supported (incremental, cross-region) Not supported
Boot volume Yes No (legacy only)
Resize Yes (Elastic Volumes) Fixed per instance type
Max IOPS 256,000 (io2 Block Express) Millions (NVMe, instance-dependent)
Max size per volume 64 TiB Instance-type dependent (up to 22.8 TB)
Durability 99.999% (io2) / 99.8-99.9% (others) None — ephemeral
Multi-Attach Yes (io1/io2, up to 16 instances) No
Cost Pay per provisioned GB + IOPS/throughput Included in instance price

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. Which of the following provides the fastest storage medium?
    1. Amazon S3
    2. Amazon EBS using Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS)
    3. SSD Instance (ephemeral) store (SSD Instance Storage provides hundreds of thousands of IOPS on some instance types, much faster than any network-attached storage)
    4. AWS Storage Gateway
  2. A company needs a block storage volume with the highest durability for a mission-critical Oracle database. Which EBS volume type should they choose?
    1. gp3
    2. gp2
    3. io2 Block Express (io2 Block Express provides 99.999% durability — 100X more durable than other volume types, designed for mission-critical applications)
    4. io1
  3. An application requires a single EBS volume with 50,000 IOPS. Which volume type(s) can meet this requirement? (Choose TWO)
    1. gp3 (gp3 now supports up to 80,000 IOPS as of Sep 2025)
    2. gp2 (gp2 max is 16,000 IOPS)
    3. io2 Block Express (io2 Block Express supports up to 256,000 IOPS)
    4. st1 (st1 is HDD-backed and optimized for throughput, not IOPS)
  4. Which statements about EBS Elastic Volumes are correct? (Choose TWO)
    1. You can increase volume size without detaching or stopping the instance
    2. You can decrease volume size dynamically (Volume size can only be increased, not decreased)
    3. Up to 4 modifications are allowed per volume within a 24-hour rolling window
    4. Volume modifications require a reboot to take effect (No downtime or reboot required)
  5. A company wants to reduce costs for EBS snapshots that are retained for compliance for 2 years but rarely accessed. What should they use?
    1. S3 Glacier Deep Archive
    2. EBS Snapshots Archive (EBS Snapshots Archive provides up to 75% lower costs for snapshots stored 90+ days that are rarely accessed)
    3. Delete the snapshots and use AMIs instead
    4. Use sc1 volumes instead of snapshots
  6. Which of the following is true about EC2 Instance Store volumes? (Choose TWO)
    1. Data is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated
    2. Instance store volumes can be detached and attached to another instance (Instance store volumes cannot be detached)
    3. Instance store volumes provide lower latency than EBS because they are physically attached
    4. Instance store volumes support point-in-time snapshots (Snapshots are not supported for instance store)
  7. A company needs to attach a single high-performance EBS volume to 8 EC2 instances in the same AZ for a clustered application. Which solution is appropriate?
    1. Use gp3 with Multi-Attach (Multi-Attach is not supported on gp3)
    2. Use io2 Block Express with Multi-Attach (io2 Block Express supports Multi-Attach to up to 16 Nitro-based instances in the same AZ with NVMe reservations for I/O fencing)
    3. Use instance store volumes shared via NFS
    4. Use st1 with Multi-Attach (Multi-Attach is not supported on HDD volumes)

References

AWS Storage Services Cheat Sheet

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 17 Comments

AWS Storage Services Cheat Sheet

AWS Storage Services

Simple Storage Service – S3

  • provides key-value based object storage with unlimited storage, unlimited objects up to 5 TB for the internet
  • offers an extremely durable, highly available, and infinitely scalable data storage infrastructure at very low costs.
  • is Object-level storage (not a Block level storage) and cannot be used to host OS or dynamic websites (but can work with Javascript SDK)
  • provides durability by redundantly storing objects on multiple facilities within a region
  • regularly verifies the integrity of data using checksums and provides the auto-healing capability
  • S3 resources consist of globally unique buckets with objects and related metadata. The data model is a flat structure with no hierarchies or folders.
  • As of March 2026, S3 stores more than 500 trillion objects, serves more than 200 million requests per second globally across hundreds of exabytes of data.
  • S3 Replication enables automatic, asynchronous copying of objects across S3 buckets in the same or different AWS regions using SRR or CRR. Replication needs versioning enabled on either side.
  • S3 Transfer Acceleration helps speed data transport over long distances between a client and an S3 bucket using CloudFront edge locations.
  • S3 supports cost-effective Static Website hosting with Client-side scripts.
  • S3 CORS – Cross-Origin Resource Sharing allows cross-origin access to S3 resources.
  • S3 Access Logs enables tracking access requests to an S3 bucket.
  • S3 notification feature enables notifications to be triggered when certain events happen in the bucket.
  • S3 Inventory helps manage the storage and can be used to audit and report on the replication and encryption status of the objects for business, compliance, and regulatory needs.
  • Requestor Pays help bucket owner to specify that the requester requesting the download will be charged for the download.
  • S3 Batch Operations help perform large-scale batch operations on S3 objects and can perform a single operation on lists of specified S3 objects.
  • Pre-Signed URLs can be used shared for uploading/downloading objects for a limited time without requiring AWS security credentials.
  • Multipart Uploads allows
    • parallel uploads with improved throughput and bandwidth utilization
    • fault tolerance and quick recovery from network issues
    • ability to pause and resume uploads
    • begin an upload before the final object size is known
  • Versioning
    • helps preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object
    • protect from unintended overwrites and accidental deletions
    • protects individual files but does NOT protect from Bucket deletion
  • MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) can be enabled for additional security for the deletion of objects.
  • Integrates with CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and SNS for event notifications
  • S3 Object Lock
    • provides Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) protection for S3 objects
    • prevents objects from being deleted or overwritten for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely
    • Governance Mode – users with specific IAM permissions can remove the lock
    • Compliance Mode – no user, including the root account, can remove the lock until retention period expires
    • supports Legal Hold which prevents object deletion indefinitely until explicitly removed
    • requires versioning to be enabled on the bucket
  • S3 Storage Classes
    • S3 Standard
      • default storage class, ideal for frequently accessed data
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.99% availability
      • Low latency and high throughput performance
      • designed to sustain the loss of data in two facilities
    • S3 Intelligent-Tiering
      • automatically moves data between access tiers based on access patterns with no retrieval charges
      • includes Frequent Access (default), Infrequent Access (after 30 days, 40% lower cost), and Archive Instant Access (after 90 days, 68% lower cost) tiers
      • optional Archive Access (90-730 days) and Deep Archive Access (180-730 days) tiers can be enabled
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.9% availability
      • ideal for data with unknown or changing access patterns
      • small monthly monitoring and automation charge per object; no retrieval charges
    • S3 Express One Zone
      • high-performance storage class launched in November 2023
      • delivers up to 10x better performance than S3 Standard with consistent single-digit millisecond latency
      • request costs up to 50% lower than S3 Standard
      • uses directory buckets (a new bucket type) stored in a single Availability Zone
      • supports up to 2 million requests per second per directory bucket
      • ideal for ML training, interactive analytics, financial modeling, and real-time advertising
      • allows co-locating storage and compute in the same AZ for optimal performance
    • S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
      • optimized for long-lived and less frequently accessed data
      • designed to sustain the loss of data in two facilities
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.9% availability
      • suitable for objects greater than 128 KB kept for at least 30 days
    • S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)
      • optimized for rapid access, less frequently accessed data
      • ideal for secondary backups and reproducible data
      • stores data in a single AZ, data stored in this storage class will be lost in the event of AZ destruction.
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.5% availability
    • S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage (Not Recommended)
      • designed for noncritical, reproducible data stored at lower levels of redundancy than the STANDARD storage class
      • reduces storage costs
      • 99.99% durability & 99.99% availability
      • designed to sustain the loss of data in a single facility
    • S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
      • lowest-cost storage for long-lived data that is rarely accessed but requires milliseconds retrieval
      • ideal for medical images, news media assets, or genomics data accessed once per quarter
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.9% availability
      • Minimum storage duration of 90 days
      • up to 68% lower cost than S3 Standard-IA
    • S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier)
      • suitable for low cost data archiving, where data access is infrequent
      • provides retrieval time of minutes to hours
        • Expedited – 1 to 5 minutes
        • Standard – 3 to 5 hours
        • Bulk – 5 to 12 hours (free)
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.9% availability
      • Minimum storage duration of 90 days
    • S3 Glacier Deep Archive
      • provides lowest cost data archiving, where data access is infrequent
      • 99.999999999% durability & 99.9% availability
      • provides retrieval time of several (12-48) hours
        • Standard – 12 hours
        • Bulk – 48 hours
      • Minimum storage duration of 180 days
      • supports long-term retention and digital preservation for data that may be accessed once or twice a year
  • Lifecycle Management policies
    • transition to move objects to different storage classes and Glacier
    • expiration to remove objects and object versions
    • can be applied to both current and non-current objects, in case, versioning is enabled.
  • Data Consistency Model
    • provides strong read-after-write consistency for PUT and DELETE requests of objects in the S3 bucket in all AWS Regions
    • updates to a single key are atomic
  • S3 Security
    • IAM policies – grant users within your own AWS account permission to access S3 resources
    • Bucket and Object ACL – grant other AWS accounts (not specific users) access to S3 resources
    • Bucket policies – allows to add or deny permissions across some or all of the objects within a single bucket
    • S3 Access Points simplify data access for any AWS service or customer application that stores data in S3.
    • S3 Glacier Vault Lock helps deploy and enforce compliance controls for individual S3 Glacier vaults with a vault lock policy.
    • S3 VPC Gateway Endpoint enables private connections between a VPC and S3, without requiring that you use an internet gateway, NAT device, VPN connection, or AWS Direct Connect connection.
    • Support SSL encryption of data in transit and data encryption at rest
    • S3 Block Public Access – provides settings to block public access at the account and bucket level (enabled by default on new buckets)
    • SSE-C disabled by default – as of April 2026, Server-Side Encryption with Customer-Provided Keys (SSE-C) is disabled by default on all new general purpose buckets for enhanced security
  • S3 Data Encryption
    • supports data at rest and data in transit encryption
    • All new objects are encrypted by default with SSE-S3 (Amazon S3-managed keys)
    • Server-Side Encryption
      • SSE-S3 – encrypts S3 objects using keys handled & managed by AWS (default)
      • SSE-KMS – leverage AWS Key Management Service to manage encryption keys. KMS provides control and audit trail over the keys.
      • SSE-C – when you want to manage your own encryption keys. AWS does not store the encryption key. Requires HTTPS. Disabled by default on new buckets since April 2026.
      • DSSE-KMS – Dual-layer Server-Side Encryption with KMS keys, provides two layers of encryption for compliance requirements
    • Client-Side Encryption
      • Client library such as the S3 Encryption Client
      • Clients must encrypt data themselves before sending it to S3
      • Clients must decrypt data themselves when retrieving from S3
      • Customer fully manages the keys and encryption cycle
  • S3 Best Practices
    • use parallel threads and Multipart upload for faster writes
    • use parallel threads and Range Header GET for faster reads
    • for list operations with a large number of objects, it’s better to build a secondary index in DynamoDB
    • use Versioning to protect from unintended overwrites and deletions, but this does not protect against bucket deletion
    • use VPC S3 Endpoints with VPC to transfer data using Amazon internal network
    • use S3 Object Lock for WORM compliance and ransomware protection

S3 Bucket Types

  • General Purpose Buckets – traditional S3 buckets for most workloads with flat storage namespace
  • Directory Buckets – used with S3 Express One Zone storage class, organized with a hierarchical directory structure for low-latency workloads
  • Table Buckets – purpose-built for storing tabular data in Apache Iceberg format (launched December 2024), with automatic compaction, snapshot management, and garbage collection
  • Vector Buckets – optimized for durable, low-cost vector storage for AI embeddings (GA December 2025), supports up to 2 billion vectors per index with dedicated APIs for storing, accessing, and querying vectors

S3 Files (2026)

  • provides fully-featured, high-performance NFS file system access to S3 data
  • first cloud object store to provide full file system semantics without data ever leaving S3
  • enables accessing S3 objects using file-based protocols for applications requiring file system interfaces

Instance Store

  • provides temporary or ephemeral block-level storage for an EC2 instance
  • is physically attached to the Instance
  • deliver very high random I/O performance, which is a good option when storage with very low latency is needed
  • cannot be dynamically resized
  • data persists when an instance is rebooted
  • data does not persist if the
    • underlying disk drive fails
    • instance stops i.e. if the EBS backed instance with instance store volumes attached is stopped
    • instance terminates
  • can be attached to an EC2 instance only when the instance is launched
  • is ideal for the temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content, or for data that is replicated across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.

Elastic Block Store – EBS

  • is virtual network-attached block storage
  • provides highly available, reliable, durable, block-level storage volumes that can be attached to a running instance
  • provides high durability and are redundant in an AZ, as the data is automatically replicated within that AZ to prevent data loss due to any single hardware component failure
  • persists and is independent of EC2 lifecycle
  • multiple volumes can be attached to a single EC2 instance
  • can be detached & attached to another EC2 instance in that same AZ only
  • volumes are Zonal i.e. created in a specific AZ and CAN’T span across AZs
  • snapshots
  • for making volume available to different AZ, create a snapshot of the volume and restore it to a new volume in any AZ within the region
  • for making the volume available to different Region, the snapshot of the volume can be copied to a different region and restored as a volume
  • Multi-Attach enables attaching a single Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) volume to multiple instances that are in the same AZ.
  • EBS Volume Types:
    • General Purpose SSD (gp3) – default and recommended for most workloads
      • baseline 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s throughput included (independent of volume size)
      • as of September 2025, supports up to 64 TiB (4x previous 16 TiB), 80,000 IOPS (5x previous 16,000), and 2,000 MiB/s throughput (2x previous 1,000 MiB/s)
      • 99.9% durability
      • 20% lower cost than gp2 with ability to independently provision IOPS and throughput
    • General Purpose SSD (gp2) – legacy, still supported
      • IOPS scales with volume size (3 IOPS per GiB), up to 16,000 IOPS
      • suitable for boot volumes, dev/test environments
      • recommended to migrate to gp3 for cost savings
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express) – highest performance
      • up to 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MiB/s throughput, 64 TiB volume size
      • 99.999% durability (100x higher than io1)
      • sub-millisecond latency
      • 1,000 IOPS per GiB ratio (20x higher than io1)
      • supports Multi-Attach
      • same price as io1, recommended as replacement
      • available in all commercial and GovCloud regions (2025)
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) – legacy, being superseded by io2
      • up to 64,000 IOPS, 50 IOPS per GiB
      • 99.9% durability
      • recommended to upgrade to io2 Block Express for better performance at same cost
    • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
      • low-cost HDD for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads
      • big data, data warehouses, log processing
      • max throughput 500 MiB/s, max IOPS 500
      • cannot be a boot volume
    • Cold HDD (sc1)
      • lowest cost HDD for less frequently accessed workloads
      • max throughput 250 MiB/s, max IOPS 250
      • cannot be a boot volume

EBS Encryption

  • allows encryption using the EBS encryption feature.
  • All data stored at rest, disk I/O, and snapshots created from the volume are encrypted.
  • uses 256-bit AES algorithms (AES-256) and an Amazon-managed KMS
  • Snapshots of encrypted EBS volumes are automatically encrypted.
  • EBS encryption by default can be enabled at the account level for all new volumes

EBS Snapshots

  • helps create backups of EBS volumes
  • are incremental
  • occur asynchronously
  • are regional and CANNOT span across regions
  • can be copied across regions to make it easier to leverage multiple regions for geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery
  • can be shared by making them public or with specific AWS accounts by modifying the access permissions of the snapshots
  • support EBS encryption
    • Snapshots of encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted
    • Volumes created from encrypted snapshots are automatically encrypted
    • All data in flight between the instance and the volume is encrypted
    • Volumes created from an unencrypted snapshot owned or have access to can be encrypted on the fly.
    • Encrypted snapshot owned or having access to, can be encrypted with a different key during the copy process.
  • can be automated using AWS Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)
  • EBS Snapshots Archive – move rarely-accessed snapshots to a low-cost archive tier (up to 75% cheaper), with retrieval taking 24-72 hours
  • Recycle Bin – protects against accidental deletion by retaining deleted snapshots for a configurable retention period

EBS vs Instance Store

Refer blog post @ EBS vs Instance Store

EFS

  • fully-managed, easy to set up, scale, and cost-optimize file storage
  • can automatically scale from gigabytes to petabytes of data without needing to provision storage
  • provides managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on and accessed by multiple EC2 in multiple AZs simultaneously
  • highly durable, highly scalable and highly available.
    • stores data redundantly across multiple Availability Zones
    • grows and shrinks automatically as files are added and removed, so there is no need to manage storage procurement or provisioning.
  • uses the Network File System version 4 (NFS v4) protocol
  • is compatible with all Linux-based AMIs for EC2, POSIX file system (~Linux) that has a standard file API
  • does not support Windows AMI (use FSx for Windows instead)
  • offers the ability to encrypt data at rest using KMS and in transit.
  • can be accessed from on-premises using an AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connection between the on-premises datacenter and VPC.
  • can be accessed concurrently from servers in the on-premises datacenter as well as EC2 instances in the Amazon VPC
  • supports up to 10,000 access points per file system (10x increase from previous 1,000 limit, February 2025)
  • Performance
    • Elastic Throughput (recommended) – automatically scales throughput up or down based on workload
      • up to 60 GiB/s read and 10 GiB/s write throughput (October 2024 increase)
    • Provisioned Throughput – specify throughput independent of storage
    • Bursting Throughput – scales with file system size
    • supports up to 2.5 million read IOPS and 500,000 write IOPS per file system (November 2024, 10x increase)
  • Storage Classes
    • EFS Standard – for frequently accessed files, multi-AZ redundancy
    • EFS Standard-IA (Infrequent Access) – lower cost for infrequently accessed files, multi-AZ redundancy
    • EFS One Zone – single-AZ, lower cost for frequently accessed data
    • EFS One Zone-IA – single-AZ, lowest cost for infrequent access
    • Lifecycle Management automatically moves data between storage classes based on access patterns
  • EFS Replication – enables automatic replication of file systems to another AWS Region or within the same Region for disaster recovery
  • EFS is a shared POSIX system for Linux systems and does not work for Windows

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

  • is a fully managed, highly reliable, and scalable Windows file system share drive
  • supports SMB protocol & Windows NTFS
  • supports Microsoft Active Directory integration, ACLs, user quotas
  • built on SSD, scale up to 10s of GB/s, millions of IOPS, 100s PB of data
  • is accessible from Windows, Linux, and MacOS compute instances
  • can be accessed from the on-premise infrastructure
  • can be configured to be Multi-AZ (high availability)
  • supports encryption of data at rest and in transit
  • provides data deduplication, which enables further cost optimization by removing redundant data.
  • data is backed-up daily to S3

Amazon FSx for Lustre

  • provides easy and cost effective way to launch and run the world’s most popular high-performance file system.
  • is a type of parallel distributed file system, for large-scale computing
  • Lustre is derived from “Linux” and “cluster”
  • Machine Learning, High Performance Computing (HPC) esp. Video Processing, Financial Modeling, Electronic Design Automation
  • scales up to 100s GB/s, millions of IOPS, sub-ms latencies
  • seamless integration with S3, it transparently presents S3 objects as files and allows you to write changed data back to S3.
  • can “read S3” as a file system (through FSx)
  • can write the output of the computations back to S3 (through FSx)
  • supports encryption of data at rest and in transit
  • can be used from on-premise servers

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP

  • fully managed shared storage built on NetApp’s popular ONTAP file system
  • supports NFS, SMB, and iSCSI protocols — accessible from Linux, Windows, and macOS
  • provides enterprise features: snapshots, cloning, replication, compression, deduplication, and tiering
  • supports Multi-AZ deployments for high availability
  • ideal for migrating on-premises NetApp/NAS workloads to AWS
  • second-generation file systems (July 2024) deliver up to 6 GBps throughput per HA pair
  • supports S3 Access Points (2025) — access file data through S3 APIs for AI/ML and analytics workloads without moving data
  • supports Autonomous Ransomware Protection (ARP) (April 2025) — detects unusual activity and generates automatic snapshots
  • can be accessed from on-premises via Direct Connect or VPN

Amazon FSx for OpenZFS

  • fully managed shared file storage built on the OpenZFS file system
  • supports NFS protocol (v3, v4, v4.1, v4.2)
  • delivers up to 1 million IOPS with sub-millisecond latencies
  • provides data management capabilities: snapshots, cloning, compression
  • ideal for migrating Linux-based file servers and applications to AWS
  • supports S3 Access Points (2025) — seamless access to file data through S3 APIs
  • accessible from Linux, Windows, and macOS compute instances

CloudFront

  • provides low latency and high data transfer speeds for distribution of static, dynamic web or streaming content to web users
  • delivers the content through a worldwide network of data centers called Edge Locations (700+ locations globally)
  • keeps persistent connections with the origin servers so that the files can be fetched from the origin servers as quickly as possible.
  • dramatically reduces the number of network hops that users’ requests must pass through
  • supports multiple origin server options, like AWS hosted service for e.g. S3, EC2, ELB or an on premise server, which stores the original, definitive version of the objects
  • single distribution can have multiple origins and Path pattern in a cache behavior determines which requests are routed to the origin
  • supports Web distribution for static, dynamic web content, on demand using progressive download & HLS and live streaming video content
    • RTMP Streaming distribution was deprecated and removed on December 31, 2020
  • supports HTTPS using either
    • dedicated IP address, which is expensive as dedicated IP address is assigned to each CloudFront edge location
    • Server Name Indication (SNI), which is free but supported by modern browsers only with the domain name available in the request header
  • For E2E HTTPS connection,
    • Viewers -> CloudFront needs either self signed certificate, or certificate issued by CA or ACM
    • CloudFront -> Origin needs certificate issued by ACM for ELB and by CA for other origins
  • Security
    • Origin Access Control (OAC) is the recommended method to restrict S3 origin access to CloudFront only. OAC supports SSE-KMS, all S3 bucket types, and dynamic requests (PUT/DELETE).
      • Origin Access Identity (OAI) is legacy — deprecated for new distributions as of March 2026. Migrate to OAC.
    • VPC Origins (November 2024) – enables CloudFront to connect directly to ALBs, NLBs, or EC2 instances in private subnets, making CloudFront the single point of entry without exposing origins to the internet
    • supports Geo restriction (Geo-Blocking) to whitelist or blacklist countries that can access the content
    • Signed URLs
      • to restrict access to individual files, for e.g., an installation download for your application.
      • users using a client, for e.g. a custom HTTP client, that doesn’t support cookies
    • Signed Cookies
      • provide access to multiple restricted files, for e.g., video part files in HLS format or all of the files in the subscribers’ area of a website.
      • don’t want to change the current URLs
    • integrates with AWS WAF, a web application firewall that helps protect web applications from attacks by allowing rules configured based on IP addresses, HTTP headers, and custom URI strings
    • integrates with AWS Shield (Standard included free) for DDoS protection
  • Edge Compute
    • CloudFront Functions – lightweight functions executing at 700+ edge locations with sub-millisecond startup, for simple request/response manipulations (URL redirects, header manipulation, cache key normalization)
    • Lambda@Edge – runs at 13 Regional Edge Caches, supports longer execution (up to 30 seconds), network access, and larger packages for complex logic
    • CloudFront KeyValueStore (2023) – globally distributed low-latency data store for CloudFront Functions, enabling data lookups without network calls (A/B testing, feature flags, geo-routing)
    • Connection Functions (November 2025) – functions for mutual TLS (mTLS) viewer authentication
  • supports GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE to get object & object headers, add, update, and delete objects
    • only caches responses to GET and HEAD requests and, optionally, OPTIONS requests
    • does not cache responses to PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE request methods and these requests are proxied back to the origin
  • object removal from cache
    • would be removed upon expiry (TTL) from the cache, by default 24 hrs
    • can be invalidated explicitly, but has a cost associated, however might continue to see the old version until it expires from those caches
    • change object name, versioning, to serve different version
  • supports adding or modifying custom headers before the request is sent to origin which can be used to
    • validate if user is accessing the content from CDN
    • identifying CDN from which the request was forwarded from, in case of multiple CloudFront distribution
    • for viewers not supporting CORS to return the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header for every request
  • supports Partial GET requests using range header to download object in smaller units improving the efficiency of partial downloads and recovery from partially failed transfers
  • supports compression to compress and serve compressed files when viewer requests include Accept-Encoding: gzip in the request header
  • supports different price class to include all regions, to include only least expensive regions and other regions to exclude most expensive regions
  • CloudFront Pricing Plans (2025) – flat-rate plans (Free, Pro $15/mo, Business $200/mo, Premium $1000/mo) combining CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, bot management, Route 53, and S3 credits into predictable monthly pricing
  • Origin Shield – additional caching layer between edge locations and origin that reduces origin load and improves cache hit ratios
  • Continuous Deployment – enables safe deployment of CloudFront configuration changes using staging distributions for testing with a subset of traffic
  • supports access logs which contain detailed information about every user request

AWS Import/Export & Data Transfer

⚠️ AWS Import/Export Disk is a legacy service and has been superseded by the AWS Snow Family. AWS Snow Family devices (Snowball Edge) are no longer available to new customers as of November 7, 2025.

Alternatives for new customers:

  • AWS DataSync — for online data transfers
  • AWS Data Transfer Terminal — for secure physical transfers
  • AWS Partner solutions — for specialized migration needs
  • AWS Outposts — for edge computing needs

AWS Snow Family (Existing Customers Only)

  • physical devices for transferring large amounts of data into and out of AWS
  • Snowball Edge Storage Optimized – 80 TB usable storage, 40 vCPUs
  • Snowball Edge Compute Optimized – 28 TB usable storage, 104 vCPUs, optional GPU
  • suitable for large-scale data migrations, disaster recovery, and edge computing
  • supports S3-compatible storage and EC2 compute instances at the edge
  • No longer available to new customers as of November 7, 2025

AWS Data Transfer Terminal (2024)

  • secure, physical locations where customers bring their storage devices for high-speed data transfer to/from AWS
  • provides at least two 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) ports per terminal
  • supports transfer to Amazon S3, EFS, and other AWS endpoints
  • available in multiple locations globally (US, Europe, etc.)
  • reservation-based model — book date and time through AWS Console
  • ideal replacement for Snow Family for physical data transfer use cases
  • charges based on number of ports used during reservation (per port-hour)

AWS DataSync

  • online data transfer service that simplifies, automates, and accelerates moving data between on-premises storage and AWS
  • supports transfer to/from S3, EFS, FSx, and between AWS storage services
  • automatically handles many transfer tasks: network optimization, data integrity validation, encryption
  • can transfer up to 10 Gbps over a Direct Connect link
  • recommended alternative to Snow Family for online transfers

AWS EBS vs Instance Store – Persistence & Speed

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 24 Comments

AWS EBS vs Instance Store

🆕 Major Updates (2024-2026)

  • EBS gp3 Performance Boost (Sep 2025) – Up to 64 TiB size, 80,000 IOPS, and 2,000 MiB/s throughput (4X/5X/2X previous limits)
  • EBS Multi-Attach – io1/io2 volumes can attach to up to 16 Nitro-based instances simultaneously
  • EBS Elastic Volumes – Up to 4 volume modifications per 24-hour window (Jan 2026)
  • io2 Block Express – 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MB/s, 64 TiB capacity, 99.999% durability
  • EBS Recycle Bin – Recover deleted snapshots, AMIs, and volumes (volumes support added Nov 2025)
  • EBS Snapshots Archive – Low-cost archive tier for infrequently accessed snapshots
  • New Instance Store Types – I7i (45 TB NVMe, 50% better performance), C8id/M8id/R8id (22.8 TB), M9gd (Graviton5)
  • EC2 instances support two types for block level storage
  • EC2 Instances can be launched using either Elastic Block Store (EBS) or Instance Store volume as root volumes and additional volumes.
  • EC2 instances can be launched by choosing between AMIs backed by EC2 instance store and AMIs backed by EBS. However, AWS recommends using EBS backed AMIs because they launch faster and use persistent storage.
  • Instance store backed AMIs (S3-backed) are supported for Linux instances only. Windows instances can only use EBS-backed AMIs.

Instance Store (Ephemeral storage)

  • An Instance store backed instance is an EC2 instance using an Instance store as root device volume created from a template stored in S3.
  • Instance store volumes access storage from disks that are physically attached to the host computer.
  • When an Instance stored instance is launched, the image that is used to boot the instance is copied to the root volume (typically sda1).
  • Instance store provides temporary block-level storage for instances.
  • Data on an instance store volume persists only during the life of the associated instance; if an instance is stopped or terminated, any data on instance store volumes is lost.
  • Modern instance store volumes use NVMe-based SSDs (Nitro SSDs) that provide high I/O performance, low latency, and always-on hardware encryption.

Key points for Instance store backed Instance

  1. Boot time is slower than EBS backed volumes and usually less than 5 min
  2. Can be selected as Root Volume and attached as additional volumes
  3. Instance store backed Instances can be of a maximum 10GiB volume size for root volumes
  4. Instance store volume can be attached as additional volumes only when the instance is being launched and cannot be attached once the Instance is up and running.
  5. Instance store backed Instances cannot be stopped, as when stopped and started AWS does not guarantee the instance would be launched in the same host, and hence the data is lost.
  6. Data on Instance store volume is LOST in the following scenarios:-
    • Failure of an underlying drive
    • Stopping an EBS-backed instance where instance stores are attached as additional volumes
    • Termination of the Instance
  7. Data on Instance store volume is NOT LOST when the instance is rebooted
  8. For EC2 instance store-backed instances AWS recommends to
    1. distribute the data on the instance stores across multiple AZs
    2. back up critical data from the instance store volumes to persistent storage on a regular basis.
  9. AMI creation requires the usage of AMI tools and needs to be executed from within the running instance.
  10. Instance store backed Instances cannot be upgraded

Instance Store Instance Types (2024-2026)

  • Storage Optimized:
    • I7i instances (Apr 2025) – Up to 45 TB NVMe storage with 3rd gen Nitro SSDs, 50% better real-time storage performance, 50% lower I/O latency, and 60% lower latency variability vs I4i
    • I4i instances – Up to 30 TB local Nitro SSD storage with always-on encryption
    • I3en instances – Up to 60 TB NVMe SSD with 100 Gbps networking
  • General Purpose with local storage:
    • M9gd (Jun 2026) – Graviton5-based with NVMe SSD, up to 30% faster compute than M8g
    • C8id/M8id/R8id (Feb 2026) – Intel Xeon 6 with up to 22.8 TB NVMe storage, 3X more local storage than 6th-gen
    • C8gd/M8gd/R8gd (Apr 2025) – Graviton4-based with NVMe SSD storage
  • Instance store volumes can deliver over 100,000+ IOPS on certain instance types (much faster than network-attached EBS storage)

Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  • An “EBS-backed” instance means that the root device for an instance launched from the AMI is an EBS volume created from an EBS snapshot
  • An EBS volume behaves like a raw, unformatted, external block device that can be attached to an instance and is not physically attached to the Instance host computer (more like network-attached storage).
  • Volume persists independently from the running life of an instance.
  • After an EBS volume is attached to an instance, you can use it like any other physical hard drive.
  • EBS volume can be detached from one instance and attached to another instance
  • EBS volumes can be created as encrypted volumes using the EBS encryption feature
  • EBS Multi-Attach: io1 and io2 Provisioned IOPS volumes can be attached to up to 16 Nitro-based instances simultaneously within the same AZ
  • EBS Elastic Volumes: Allows modification of volume size, type, and IOPS without detaching the volume or stopping the instance

Key points for EBS backed Instance

  1. Boot time is very fast usually less than a min
  2. Can be selected as Root Volume and attached as additional volumes
  3. EBS backed Instances can be of maximum 64 TiB volume size depending upon the volume type and OS (gp3 and io2 Block Express both support up to 64 TiB)
  4. EBS volume can be attached as additional volumes when the Instance is launched and even when the Instance is up and running
  5. Data on the EBS volume is LOST for

    1. EBS Root volume, if Delete On Termination flag is enabled, which is the default.
    2. Attached EBS volumes, if the Delete On Termination flag is enabled. It’s disabled, by default.
  6. Data on EBS volume is NOT LOST in the following scenarios:-
    • Reboot on the Instance
    • Stopping an EBS-backed instance
    • Termination of the Instance for the additional EBS volumes. Additional EBS volumes are detached with their data intact
  7. When an EBS-backed instance is in a stopped state, various instance– and volume-related tasks can be done for e.g. you can modify the properties of the instance, you can change the size of your instance or update the kernel it is using, or you can attach your root volume to a different running instance for debugging or any other purpose
  8. EBS volumes are AZ scoped and tied to a single AZ where created.
  9. EBS volumes are automatically replicated within that zone to prevent data loss due to the failure of any single hardware component
  10. AMI creation is easy using a Single command
  11. EBS backed Instances can be upgraded for instance type, Kernel, RAM disk, and user data
  12. EBS volumes support Elastic Volumes modifications – change size, type, and IOPS/throughput without detaching (up to 4 modifications per 24-hour window as of Jan 2026)

EBS Volume Types (Current)

  • EBS provides six volume types:
    • General Purpose SSD (gp3) – Up to 64 TiB, 80,000 IOPS, 2,000 MiB/s (enhanced Sep 2025). Baseline: 3,000 IOPS, 125 MiB/s. Recommended for most workloads.
    • General Purpose SSD (gp2) – Up to 16 TiB, 16,000 IOPS. Burstable performance. Migration to gp3 recommended for cost savings (up to 20% less).
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2 Block Express) – Up to 64 TiB, 256,000 IOPS, 4,000 MB/s, 99.999% durability, sub-millisecond latency. Supports Multi-Attach.
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) – Up to 16 TiB, 64,000 IOPS. Migration to io2 recommended for better durability at same cost.
    • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) – Up to 16 TiB, 500 MiB/s. For frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads.
    • Cold HDD (sc1) – Up to 16 TiB, 250 MiB/s. Lowest cost for infrequently accessed data.

EBS Data Protection Features

  • EBS Snapshots: Point-in-time backups stored in S3, incremental in nature
    • Snapshots Archive: Low-cost tier for infrequently accessed snapshots (75% cheaper). Minimum 90-day retention. Restore takes 24-72 hours.
    • Snapshots Lock: Prevent snapshot deletion for a specified period (governance or compliance mode)
  • Recycle Bin: Recover accidentally deleted EBS snapshots, AMIs, and EBS volumes
    • Retention rules specify how long deleted resources are retained (1 day to 1 year)
    • Rule Lock: Prevent retention rules from being modified or deleted
    • EBS Volumes support added in Nov 2025
  • Encryption by Default: Enable at account/region level to encrypt all new EBS volumes and snapshots using AWS KMS

EBS vs Instance Store Comparison

Feature EBS Instance Store
Persistence Persists independently of instance lifecycle Ephemeral – lost on stop/terminate/hardware failure
Boot Time Fast (less than 1 minute) Slower (up to 5 minutes, retrieved from S3)
Max Volume Size Up to 64 TiB (gp3, io2 Block Express) Up to 10 GiB (root); varies by instance type for additional
Performance Up to 256,000 IOPS (io2), 80,000 IOPS (gp3) 100,000+ IOPS (SSD); lowest latency (physically attached)
Attachment Can attach/detach while running; Multi-Attach for io1/io2 Only at launch; cannot be added later
Stop/Start Supported; data persists Cannot stop instance-store backed instances
Encryption EBS encryption with KMS; encryption by default option Hardware encryption on Nitro SSD instance types
Snapshots Supported (incremental, archive tier, Recycle Bin) Not supported
AMI Creation Single command Requires AMI tools from within instance
Instance Upgrade Can change instance type while stopped Cannot upgrade instance type
Cost Pay for provisioned storage (per GB-month + IOPS/throughput) Included in instance price
Use Cases Databases, boot volumes, persistent storage, most workloads Temporary data, caches, buffers, scratch data, high-IOPS workloads
Replication Automatically replicated within AZ No replication

Boot Times

  • EBS-backed AMIs launch faster than EC2 instance store-backed AMIs.
  • When an EC2 instance store-backed AMI is launched, all the parts have to be retrieved from S3 before the instance is available.
  • When an EBS-backed AMI is launched, parts are lazily loaded and only the parts required to boot the instance need to be retrieved from the snapshot before the instance is available.
  • However, the performance of an instance that uses an EBS volume for its root device is slower for a short time while the remaining parts are retrieved from the snapshot and loaded into the volume.
  • When you stop and restart the instance, it launches quickly, because the state is stored in an EBS volume.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. EC2 EBS-backed (EBS root) instance is stopped, what happens to the data on any ephemeral store volumes?
    1. Data is automatically saved in an EBS volume.
    2. Data is unavailable until the instance is restarted.
    3. Data will be deleted and will no longer be accessible.
    4. Data is automatically saved as an EBS snapshot.
  2. When an EC2 instance that is backed by an S3-based AMI is terminated, what happens to the data on the root volume?
    1. Data is automatically saved as an EBS snapshot.
    2. Data is automatically saved as an EBS volume.
    3. Data is unavailable until the instance is restarted.
    4. Data is automatically deleted.
  3. Which of the following will occur when an EC2 instance in a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) with an associated Elastic IP is stopped and started? (Choose 2 answers)
    1. The Elastic IP will be dissociated from the instance
    2. All data on instance-store devices will be lost
    3. All data on EBS (Elastic Block Store) devices will be lost
    4. The ENI (Elastic Network Interface) is detached
    5. The underlying host for the instance is changed
  4. Which of the following provides the fastest storage medium?
    1. Amazon S3
    2. Amazon EBS using Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS)
    3. SSD Instance (ephemeral) store (SSD Instance Storage provides 100,000+ IOPS on some instance types, much faster than any network-attached storage)
    4. AWS Storage Gateway
  5. A company needs to store database files that require very high IOPS with the lowest possible latency. The data does not need to persist if the instance is terminated. Which storage option is MOST appropriate?
    1. Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volume
    2. Amazon EBS gp3 volume
    3. Instance store volume (Instance store provides the lowest latency as it’s physically attached. Data persistence is not required, making ephemeral storage appropriate.)
    4. Amazon S3
  6. An EBS volume is attached to a running EC2 instance. The team needs to increase the volume size and change the volume type without downtime. Which EBS feature enables this?
    1. EBS Snapshots
    2. EBS Multi-Attach
    3. EBS Elastic Volumes (Elastic Volumes allows modification of size, type, and IOPS without detaching the volume or stopping the instance.)
    4. EBS Encryption
  7. A company requires a single EBS volume to be shared across multiple EC2 instances for a clustered application in the same AZ. Which EBS feature and volume type should be used?
    1. gp3 with EBS Elastic Volumes
    2. io1 or io2 with Multi-Attach (Multi-Attach is available only for io1 and io2 Provisioned IOPS volumes and supports up to 16 Nitro-based instances in the same AZ.)
    3. st1 with EBS Snapshots
    4. gp2 with Multi-Attach
  8. An administrator accidentally deleted several EBS snapshots. Which AWS feature can help recover these deleted snapshots?
    1. EBS Snapshot Archive
    2. AWS Backup
    3. Recycle Bin (Recycle Bin retains deleted EBS snapshots, AMIs, and EBS volumes based on configured retention rules, allowing recovery within the retention period.)
    4. EBS Snapshot Lock

References