Snapshot

AWS EBS Snapshot

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 38 Comments

EBS Snapshot

  • EBS provides the ability to create snapshots (backups) of any EBS volume and write a copy of the data in the volume to S3, where it is stored redundantly in multiple Availability Zones
  • Snapshots are incremental backups and store only the data that was changed from the time the last snapshot was taken.
  • Snapshots can be used to create new volumes, increase the size of the volumes or replicate data across Availability Zones.
  • Snapshot size can probably be smaller than the volume size as the data is compressed before being saved to S3.
  • Even though snapshots are saved incrementally, the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.
  • EBS Snapshots can be used to migrate or create EBS volumes in different AZs or regions.

Multi-Volume Snapshots

  • Snapshots can be used to create a backup of critical workloads, such as a large database or a file system that spans across multiple EBS volumes.
  • Multi-volume snapshots help take exact point-in-time, data-coordinated, and crash-consistent snapshots across multiple EBS volumes attached to an EC2 instance.
  • It is no longer required to stop the instance or to coordinate between volumes to ensure crash consistency because snapshots are automatically taken across multiple EBS volumes.

EBS Snapshot creation

  • Snapshots can be created from EBS volumes periodically and are point-in-time snapshots.
  • Snapshots are incremental and only store the blocks on the device that changed since the last snapshot was taken
  • Snapshots occur asynchronously; the point-in-time snapshot is created immediately while it takes time to upload the modified blocks to S3. While it is completing, an in-progress snapshot is not affected by ongoing reads and writes to the volume.
  • Snapshots can be taken from in-use volumes. However, snapshots will only capture the data that was written to the EBS volumes at the time the snapshot command is issued excluding the data which is cached by any applications of OS.
  • Recommended ways to create a Snapshot from an EBS volume are
    • Pause all file writes to the volume
    • Unmount the Volume -> Take Snapshot -> Remount the Volume
    • Stop the instance – Take Snapshot (for root EBS volumes)
  • EBS volume created based on a snapshot
    • begins as an exact replica of the original volume that was used to create the snapshot.
    • replicated volume loads data in the background so that it can be used immediately.
    • If data that hasn’t been loaded yet is accessed, the volume immediately downloads the requested data from S3 and then continues loading the rest of the volume’s data in the background.

EBS Snapshot Deletion

  • When a snapshot is deleted only the data exclusive to that snapshot is removed.
  • Deleting previous snapshots of a volume does not affect the ability to restore volumes from later snapshots of that volume.
  • Active snapshots contain all of the information needed to restore your data (from the time the snapshot was taken) to a new EBS volume.
  • Even though snapshots are saved incrementally, the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.
  • Snapshot of the root device of an EBS volume used by a registered AMI can’t be deleted. AMI needs to be deregistered to be able to delete the snapshot.

EBS Snapshot Copy

  • Snapshots are constrained to the region in which they are created and can be used to launch EBS volumes within the same region only
  • Snapshots can be copied across regions to make it easier to leverage multiple regions for geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery
  • Snapshots are copied with S3 server-side encryption (256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard) to encrypt the data and the snapshot copy receives a snapshot ID that’s different from the original snapshot’s ID.
  • User-defined tags are not copied from the source to the new snapshot.
  • First Snapshot copy to another region is always a full copy, while the rest are always incremental.
  • When a snapshot is copied,
    • it can be encrypted if currently unencrypted or
    • can be encrypted using a different encryption key. Changing the encryption status of a snapshot or using a non-default EBS CMK during a copy operation always results in a full copy (not incremental)

EBS Snapshot Sharing

  • Snapshots can be shared by making them public or with specific AWS accounts by modifying the access permissions of the snapshots
  • Encrypted snapshots cannot be made available publicly.
  • Only unencrypted snapshots can be shared. Encrypted snapshots cannot be shared between accounts or made public
  • Encrypted snapshot can be shared with specific AWS accounts by sharing the custom CMK key used must also be shared to encrypt it
  • Cross-account permissions may be applied to a custom key either when it is created or at a later time.
  • Users, with access to snapshots, can copy the snapshot and create their own EBS volumes based on the snapshot while the original snapshot remains unaffected
  • AWS prevents you from sharing snapshots that were encrypted with the default CMK

EBS Snapshot Encryption

  • EBS snapshots fully 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.
  • Unencrypted snapshots can be encrypted during the copy process.
  • Encrypted snapshots that you own or have access to, can be encrypted with a different key during the copy process.
  • First snapshot of an encrypted volume that has been created from an unencrypted snapshot is always a full snapshot.
  • First snapshot of a re-encrypted volume, which has a different CMK compared to the source snapshot, is always a full snapshot.

EBS Snapshot Lifecycle Automation

  • Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager can be used to automate the creation, retention, and deletion of snapshots taken to back up the EBS volumes.
  • Automating snapshot management helps you to:
    • Protect valuable data by enforcing a regular backup schedule.
    • Retain backups as required by auditors or internal compliance.
    • Reduce storage costs by deleting outdated backups.

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. An existing application stores sensitive information on a non-boot Amazon EBS data volume attached to an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instance. Which of the following approaches would protect the sensitive data on an Amazon EBS volume?
    1. Upload your customer keys to AWS CloudHSM. Associate the Amazon EBS volume with AWS CloudHSM. Remount the Amazon EBS volume.
    2. Create and mount a new, encrypted Amazon EBS volume. Move the data to the new volume. Delete the old Amazon EBS volume.
    3. Unmount the EBS volume. Toggle the encryption attribute to True. Re-mount the Amazon EBS volume.
    4. Snapshot the current Amazon EBS volume. Restore the snapshot to a new, encrypted Amazon EBS volume. Mount the Amazon EBS volume (Need to create a snapshot, create an encrypted copy of snapshot and then create an EBS volume and mount it)
  2. Is it possible to access your EBS snapshots?
    1. Yes, through the Amazon S3 APIs.
    2. Yes, through the Amazon EC2 APIs
    3. No, EBS snapshots cannot be accessed; they can only be used to create a new EBS volume.
    4. EBS doesn’t provide snapshots.
  3. Which of the following approaches provides the lowest cost for Amazon Elastic Block Store snapshots while giving you the ability to fully restore data?
    1. Maintain two snapshots: the original snapshot and the latest incremental snapshot
    2. Maintain a volume snapshot; subsequent snapshots will overwrite one another
    3. Maintain a single snapshot the latest snapshot is both Incremental and complete
    4. Maintain the most current snapshot, archive the original and incremental to Amazon Glacier.
  4. Which procedure for backing up a relational database on EC2 that is using a set of RAIDed EBS volumes for storage minimizes the time during which the database cannot be written to and results in a consistent backup?
    1. Detach EBS volumes, 2. Start EBS snapshot of volumes, 3. Re-attach EBS volumes
    2. Stop the EC2 Instance. 2. Snapshot the EBS volumes
    3. Suspend disk I/O, 2. Create an image of the EC2 Instance, 3. Resume disk I/O
    4. Suspend disk I/O, 2. Start EBS snapshot of volumes, 3. Resume disk I/O
    5. Suspend disk I/O, 2. Start EBS snapshot of volumes, 3. Wait for snapshots to complete, 4. Resume disk I/O
  5. How can an EBS volume that is currently attached to an EC2 instance be migrated from one Availability Zone to another?
    1. Detach the volume and attach it to another EC2 instance in the other AZ.
    2. Simply create a new volume in the other AZ and specify the original volume as the source.
    3. Create a snapshot of the volume, and create a new volume from the snapshot in the other AZ
    4. Detach the volume, then use the ec2-migrate-volume command to move it to another AZ.
  6. How are the EBS snapshots saved on Amazon S3?
    1. Exponentially
    2. Incrementally
    3. EBS snapshots are not stored in the Amazon S3
    4. Decrementally
  7. EBS Snapshots occur _____
    1. Asynchronously
    2. Synchronously
    3. Weekly
  8. What will be the status of the snapshot until the snapshot is complete?
    1. Running
    2. Working
    3. Progressing
    4. Pending
  9. Before I delete an EBS volume, what can I do if I want to recreate the volume later?
    1. Create a copy of the EBS volume (not a snapshot)
    2. Create and Store a snapshot of the volume
    3. Download the content to an EC2 instance
    4. Back up the data in to a physical disk
  10. Which of the following are true regarding encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes? Choose 2 answers
    1. Supported on all Amazon EBS volume types
    2. Snapshots are automatically encrypted
    3. Available to all instance types
    4. Existing volumes can be encrypted
    5. Shared volumes can be encrypted
  11. Amazon EBS snapshots have which of the following two characteristics? (Choose 2.) Choose 2 answers
    1. EBS snapshots only save incremental changes from snapshot to snapshot
    2. EBS snapshots can be created in real-time without stopping an EC2 instance (the snapshot can be taken real time however it will not be consistent and the recommended way is to stop or freeze the IO)
    3. EBS snapshots can only be restored to an EBS volume of the same size or smaller (EBS volume restored from snapshots need to be of the same size of larger size)
    4. EBS snapshots can only be restored and mounted to an instance in the same Availability Zone as the original EBS volume (Snapshots are specific to Region and can be used to create a volume in any AZ and does not depend on the original EBS volume AZ)
  12. A user is planning to schedule a backup for an EBS volume. The user wants security of the snapshot data. How can the user achieve data encryption with a snapshot?
    1. Use encrypted EBS volumes so that the snapshot will be encrypted by AWS (Refer link)
    2. While creating a snapshot select the snapshot with encryption
    3. By default the snapshot is encrypted by AWS
    4. Enable server side encryption for the snapshot using S3
  13. A sys admin is trying to understand EBS snapshots. Which of the below mentioned statements will not be useful to the admin to understand the concepts about a snapshot?
    1. Snapshot is synchronous
    2. It is recommended to stop the instance before taking a snapshot for consistent data
    3. Snapshot is incremental
    4. Snapshot captures the data that has been written to the hard disk when the snapshot command was executed
  14. When creation of an EBS snapshot is initiated but not completed, the EBS volume
    1. Cannot be detached or attached to an EC2 instance until me snapshot completes
    2. Can be used in read-only mode while me snapshot is in progress
    3. Can be used while the snapshot is in progress
    4. Cannot be used until the snapshot completes
  15. You have a server with a 5O0GB Amazon EBS data volume. The volume is 80% full. You need to back up the volume at regular intervals and be able to re-create the volume in a new Availability Zone in the shortest time possible. All applications using the volume can be paused for a period of a few minutes with no discernible user impact. Which of the following backup methods will best fulfill your requirements?
    1. Take periodic snapshots of the EBS volume
    2. Use a third-party Incremental backup application to back up to Amazon Glacier
    3. Periodically back up all data to a single compressed archive and archive to Amazon S3 using a parallelized multi-part upload
    4. Create another EBS volume in the second Availability Zone attach it to the Amazon EC2 instance, and use a disk manager to mirror me two disks
  16. A user is creating a snapshot of an EBS volume. Which of the below statements is incorrect in relation to the creation of an EBS snapshot?
    1. Its incremental
    2. It can be used to launch a new instance
    3. It is stored in the same AZ as the volume (stored in the same region)
    4. It is a point in time backup of the EBS volume
  17. A user has created a snapshot of an EBS volume. Which of the below mentioned usage cases is not possible with respect to a snapshot?
    1. Mirroring the volume from one AZ to another AZ
    2. Launch an instance
    3. Decrease the volume size
    4. Increase the size of the volume
  18. What is true of the way that encryption works with EBS?
    1. Snapshotting an encrypted volume makes an encrypted snapshot; restoring an encrypted snapshot creates an encrypted volume when specified / requested.
    2. Snapshotting an encrypted volume makes an encrypted snapshot when specified / requested; restoring an encrypted snapshot creates an encrypted volume when specified / requested.
    3. Snapshotting an encrypted volume makes an encrypted snapshot; restoring an encrypted snapshot always creates an encrypted volume.
    4. Snapshotting an encrypted volume makes an encrypted snapshot when specified / requested; restoring an encrypted snapshot always creates an encrypted volume.
  19. Why are more frequent snapshots of EBS Volumes faster?
    1. Blocks in EBS Volumes are allocated lazily, since while logically separated from other EBS Volumes, Volumes often share the same physical hardware. Snapshotting the first time forces full block range allocation, so the second snapshot doesn’t need to perform the allocation phase and is faster.
    2. The snapshots are incremental so that only the blocks on the device that have changed after your last snapshot are saved in the new snapshot.
    3. AWS provisions more disk throughput for burst capacity during snapshots if the drive has been pre-warmed by snapshotting and reading all blocks.
    4. The drive is pre-warmed, so block access is more rapid for volumes when every block on the device has already been read at least one time.
  20. Which is not a restriction on AWS EBS Snapshots?
    1. Snapshots which are shared cannot be used as a basis for other snapshots (Snapshots shared with other users are usable in full by the recipient, including but limited to the ability to base modified volumes and snapshots)
    2. You cannot share a snapshot containing an AWS Access Key ID or AWS Secret Access Key
    3. You cannot share encrypted snapshots (NOTE: this has be updated partially where you can share a encrypted snapshot with other accounts)
    4. Snapshot restorations are restricted to the region in which the snapshots are created
  21. There is a very serious outage at AWS. EC2 is not affected, but your EC2 instance deployment scripts stopped working in the region with the outage. What might be the issue?
    1. The AWS Console is down, so your CLI commands do not work.
    2. S3 is unavailable, so you can’t create EBS volumes from a snapshot you use to deploy new volumes. (EBS volume snapshots are stored in S3. If S3 is unavailable, snapshots are unavailable)
    3. AWS turns off the <code>DeployCode</code> API call when there are major outages, to protect from system floods.
    4. None of the other answers make sense. If EC2 is not affected, it must be some other issue.

Google Cloud Compute Engine Snapshots

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil

Compute Engine Snapshots

  • Snapshots provide periodic backup of the persistent disks
  • Snapshots incrementally back up data from the persistent disks.
  • Snapshots are global resources, so any snapshot is accessible by any resource within the same project.
  • Snapshots can be shared across projects.
  • Storage costs for persistent disk snapshots charge only for the total size of the snapshot.
  • Snapshots once created with the current state of the disk, can be restored as a new disk.
  • Compute Engine stores multiple copies of each snapshot across multiple locations with automatic checksums to ensure the integrity of the data.
  • Snapshots can be created from disks even while they are attached to running virtual machine (VM) instances.
  • Lifecycle of a snapshot created from a disk attached to a running VM instances is independent of the lifecycle of the VM instance.
  • Snapshots can be stored in either one Cloud Storage multi-regional location, such as asia, or one Cloud Storage regional location, such as asia-south1.
  • A multi-regional storage location provides higher availability and might reduce network costs when creating or restoring a snapshot
  • A snapshot can be used to create a new disk in any region and zone, regardless of the storage location of the snapshot.

Snapshot Creation

  • Snapshots are incremental and automatically compressed, so that they can be regularly created on a persistent disk faster and at a lower cost than regularly creating a full image of the disk.
  • Incremental snapshots work as follows:
    • The first successful snapshot of a persistent disk is a full snapshot that contains all the data on the persistent disk.
    • The second snapshot only contains any new data or modified data since the first snapshot. Data that hasn’t changed since snapshot 1 isn’t included. Instead, snapshot 2 contains references to snapshot 1 for any unchanged data.
    • Snapshot 3 contains any new or changed data since snapshot 2 but won’t contain any unchanged data from snapshot 1 or 2. Instead, snapshot 3 contains references to blocks in snapshot 1 and snapshot 2 for any unchanged data.

Snapshot Deletion

  • Compute Engine uses incremental snapshots so that each snapshot contains only the data that has changed since the previous snapshot.
  • For unchanged data, snapshots reference the data in previous snapshots.
  • When a snapshot is deleted, Compute Engine immediately marks the snapshot as DELETED in the system.
    • If the snapshot has no dependent snapshots, it is deleted outright.
    • However, if the snapshot does have dependent snapshots:
      • Any data that is required for restoring other snapshots is moved into the next snapshot, increasing its size.
      • Any data that is not required for restoring other snapshots is deleted. This lowers the total size of all your snapshots.
      • The next snapshot no longer references the snapshot marked for deletion, and instead references the snapshot before it.
  • Deleting a snapshot does not necessarily delete all the data on the snapshot because subsequent snapshots might require information stored in a previous snapshot, keep in mind that
  • To definitively delete data from the snapshots, you should delete all snapshots.

Snapshot Best Practices

  • If a snapshot is created of the persistent disk while the application is running, the snapshot might not capture pending writes that are in transit from memory to disk. So, prepare disk for consistency
    • Pause application/processes that write data, flush disk buffers
    • Unmount disk completely
    • For windows, use VSS snapshots
    • Use ext4 for linux to reduce the risk that data is cached without actually being written to the persistent disk.
  • Take only one snapshot at a time
  • Schedule snapshot off-peak hours
  • Avoid frequent snapshots, take a snapshot of the disk once per hour. Avoid taking snapshots more often than that. Disk snapshots can be created at most once every 10 minutes.
  • Use snapshot schedules as a best practice to back up your Compute Engine workloads
  • Use multiple persistent disks for large data volume. Larger amounts of data create larger snapshots, which cost more and take longer to create.
  • Run fstrim before snapshot (Linux) to clean up space, as this command removes blocks that the file system no longer needs, so that the system can create the snapshot more quickly and with a smaller size
  • Use image from an infrequently used snapshot, instead of using the snapshot itself

GCP 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).
  • GCP services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • GCP exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with GCP updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. You have a workload running on Compute Engine that is critical to your business. You want to ensure that the data on the boot disk of this workload is backed up regularly. You need to be able to restore a backup as quickly as possible in case of disaster. You also want older backups to be cleaned automatically to save on cost. You want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do?
    1. Create a Cloud Function to create an instance template.
    2. Create a snapshot schedule for the disk using the desired interval.
    3. Create a cron job to create a new disk from the disk using gcloud.
    4. Create a Cloud Task to create an image and export it to Cloud Storage.

References

Google_Cloud_Compute_Engine_Snapshots

AWS Elastic Block Store Storage – EBS

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 61 Comments

EC2 Elastic Block Storage – EBS

  • Elastic Block Storage – EBS provides highly available, reliable, durable, block-level storage volumes that can be attached to an EC2 instance.
  • EBS as a primary storage device is recommended for data that requires frequent and granular updates e.g. running a database or filesystem.
  • An EBS volume
    • behaves like a raw, unformatted, external block device that can be attached to a single EC2 instance at a time.
    • persists independently from the running life of an instance.
    • is Zonal and can be attached to any instance within the same Availability Zone and can be used like any other physical hard drive.
    • is particularly well-suited for use as the primary storage for file systems, databases, or any applications that require fine granular updates and access to raw, unformatted, block-level storage.

Elastic Block Storage Features

  • EBS Volumes are created in a specific Availability Zone and can be attached to any instance in that same AZ.
  • Volumes can be backed up by creating a snapshot of the volume, which is stored in S3.
  • Volumes can be created from a snapshot that can be attached to another instance within the same region.
  • Volumes can be made available outside of the AZ by creating and restoring the snapshot to a new volume anywhere in that region.
  • Snapshots can also be copied to other regions and then restored to new volumes, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery.
  • Volumes allow encryption using the EBS encryption feature. All data stored at rest, disk I/O, and snapshots created from the volume are encrypted.
  • Encryption occurs on the EC2 instance, providing encryption of data-in-transit from EC2 to the EBS volume.
  • Elastic Volumes help easily adapt the volumes as the needs of the applications change. Elastic Volumes allow you to dynamically increase capacity, tune performance, and change the type of any new or existing current generation volume with no downtime or performance impact.
  • You can dynamically increase size, modify the provisioned IOPS capacity, and change volume type on live production volumes.
  • General Purpose (SSD) volumes support up to 10,000 16000 IOPS and 160 250 MB/s of throughput and Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes support up to 20,000 64000 IOPS and 320 1000 MB/s of throughput.
  • EBS Magnetic volumes can be created from 1 GiB to 1 TiB in size; EBS General Purpose (SSD) and Provisioned IOPS (SSD) volumes can be created up to 16 TiB in size.

EBS Benefits

  • Data Availability
    • Data is automatically replicated in an Availability Zone to prevent data loss due to the failure of any single hardware component.
  • Data Persistence
    • persists independently of the running life of an EC2 instance
    • persists when an instance is stopped, started, or rebooted
    • Root volume is deleted, by default, on Instance termination but the behaviour can be changed using the DeleteOnTermination flag
    • All attached volumes persist, by default, on instance termination
  • Data Encryption
    • can be encrypted by the EBS encryption feature
    • uses 256-bit AES-256 and an Amazon-managed key infrastructure.
    • Encryption occurs on the server that hosts the EC2 instance, providing encryption of data-in-transit from the EC2 instance to EBS storage
    • Snapshots of encrypted EBS volumes are automatically encrypted.
  • Snapshots
    • provides the ability to create snapshots (backups) of any EBS volume and write a copy of the data in the volume to S3, where it is stored redundantly in multiple Availability Zones.
    • can be used to create new volumes, increase the size of the volumes or replicate data across Availability Zones or Regions.
    • are incremental backups and store only the data that was changed from the time the last snapshot was taken.
    • Snapshot size can probably be smaller than the volume size as the data is compressed before being saved to S3.
    • Even though snapshots are saved incrementally, the snapshot deletion process is designed so that you need to retain only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the volume.

EBS Volume Types

Refer blog post @ EBS Volume Types

EBS Volume

EBS Volume Creation

  • Creating New volumes
    • Completely new from console or command line tools and can then be attached to an EC2 instance in the same Availability Zone.
  • Restore volume from Snapshots
    • Volumes can also be restored from previously created snapshots
    • New volumes created from existing snapshots are loaded lazily in the background.
    • There is no need to wait for all of the data to transfer from S3 to the volume before the attached instance can start accessing the volume and all its data.
    • If the instance accesses the data that hasn’t yet been loaded, the volume immediately downloads the requested data from S3, and continues loading the rest of the data in the background.
    • Volumes restored from encrypted snapshots are always encrypted, by default.
  • Volumes can be created and attached to a running EC2 instance by specifying a block device mapping

EBS Volume Detachment

  • EBS volumes can be detached from an instance explicitly or by terminating the instance.
  • EBS root volumes can be detached by stopping the instance.
  • EBS data volumes, attached to a running instance, can be detached by unmounting the volume from the instance first.
  • If the volume is detached without being unmounted, it might result in the volume being stuck in a busy state and could possibly damage the file system or the data it contains.
  • EBS volume can be force detached from an instance, using the Force Detach option, but it might lead to data loss or a corrupted file system as the instance does not get an opportunity to flush file system caches or file system metadata.
  • Charges are still incurred for the volume after its detachment

EBS Volume Deletion

  • EBS volume deletion would wipe out its data and the volume can’t be attached to any instance. However, it can be backed up before deletion using EBS snapshots

EBS Volume Resize

  • EBS Elastic Volumes can be modified to increase the volume size, change the volume type, or adjust the performance of your EBS volumes.
  • If the instance supports Elastic Volumes, changes can be performed without detaching the volume or restarting the instance.

EBS Volume Snapshots

Refer blog post @ EBS Snapshot

EBS Encryption

  • EBS volumes can be created and attached to a supported instance type and support the following types of data
    • Data at rest
    • All disk I/O i.e All data moving between the volume and the instance
    • All snapshots created from the volume
    • All volumes created from those snapshots
  • Encryption occurs on the servers that host EC2 instances, providing encryption of data-in-transit from EC2 instances to EBS storage.
  • EBS encryption is supported with all EBS volume types (gp2, io1, st1, and sc1), and has the same IOPS performance on encrypted volumes as with unencrypted volumes, with a minimal effect on latency
  • EBS encryption is only available on select instance types.
  • Volumes created from encrypted snapshots and snapshots of encrypted volumes are automatically encrypted using the same encryption key.
  • EBS encryption uses AWS KMS customer master keys (CMK) when creating encrypted volumes and any snapshots created from the encrypted volumes.
  • EBS volumes can be encrypted using either
    • a default CMK created for you automatically.
    • a CMK that you created separately using AWS KMS, giving you more flexibility, including the ability to create, rotate, disable, define access controls, and audit the encryption keys used to protect your data.
  • Public or shared snapshots of encrypted volumes are not supported, because other accounts would be able to decrypt your data and needs to be migrated to an unencrypted status before sharing.
  • Existing unencrypted volumes cannot be encrypted directly, but can be migrated by
    • Option 1
      • create an unencrypted snapshot from the volume
      • create an encrypted copy of an unencrypted snapshot
      • create an encrypted volume from the encrypted snapshot
    • Option 2
      • create an unencrypted snapshot from the volume
      • create an encrypted volume from an unencrypted snapshot
  • An encrypted snapshot can be created from an unencrypted snapshot by creating an encrypted copy of the unencrypted snapshot.
  • Unencrypted volume cannot be created from an encrypted volume directly but needs to be migrated

EBS Multi-Attach

Refer blog Post @ EBS Multi-Attach

EBS Performance

Refer blog Post @ EBS Performance

EBS vs Instance Store

Refer blog post @ EBS vs Instance Store

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. _____ is a durable, block-level storage volume that you can attach to a single, running Amazon EC2 instance.
    1. Amazon S3
    2. Amazon EBS
    3. None of these
    4. All of these
  2. Which Amazon storage do you think is the best for my database-style applications that frequently encounter many random reads and writes across the dataset?
    1. None of these.
    2. Amazon Instance Storage
    3. Any of these
    4. Amazon EBS
  3. What does Amazon EBS stand for?
    1. Elastic Block Storage
    2. Elastic Business Server
    3. Elastic Blade Server
    4. Elastic Block Store
  4. Which Amazon Storage behaves like raw, unformatted, external block devices that you can attach to your instances?
    1. None of these.
    2. Amazon Instance Storage
    3. Amazon EBS
    4. All of these
  5. A user has created numerous EBS volumes. What is the general limit for each AWS account for the maximum number of EBS volumes that can be created?
    1. 10000
    2. 5000
    3. 100
    4. 1000
  6. Select the correct set of steps for exposing the snapshot only to specific AWS accounts
    1. Select Public for all the accounts and check mark those accounts with whom you want to expose the snapshots and click save.
    2. Select Private and enter the IDs of those AWS accounts, and click Save.
    3. Select Public, enter the IDs of those AWS accounts, and click Save.
    4. Select Public, mark the IDs of those AWS accounts as private, and click Save.
  7. If an Amazon EBS volume is the root device of an instance, can I detach it without stopping the instance?
    1. Yes but only if Windows instance
    2. No
    3. Yes
    4. Yes but only if a Linux instance
  8. Can we attach an EBS volume to more than one EC2 instance at the same time?
    1. Yes
    2. No
    3. Only EC2-optimized EBS volumes.
    4. Only in read mode.
  9. Do the Amazon EBS volumes persist independently from the running life of an Amazon EC2 instance?
    1. Only if instructed to when created
    2. Yes
    3. No
  10. Can I delete a snapshot of the root device of an EBS volume used by a registered AMI?
    1. Only via API
    2. Only via Console
    3. Yes
    4. No
  11. By default, EBS volumes that are created and attached to an instance at launch are deleted when that instance is terminated. You can modify this behavior by changing the value of the flag_____ to false when you launch the instance
    1. DeleteOnTermination
    2. RemoveOnDeletion
    3. RemoveOnTermination
    4. TerminateOnDeletion
  12. Your company policies require encryption of sensitive data at rest. You are considering the possible options for protecting data while storing it at rest on an EBS data volume, attached to an EC2 instance. Which of these options would allow you to encrypt your data at rest? (Choose 3 answers)
    1. Implement third party volume encryption tools
    2. Do nothing as EBS volumes are encrypted by default
    3. Encrypt data inside your applications before storing it on EBS
    4. Encrypt data using native data encryption drivers at the file system level
    5. Implement SSL/TLS for all services running on the server
  13. Which of the following are true regarding encrypted Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes? Choose 2 answers
    1. Supported on all Amazon EBS volume types
    2. Snapshots are automatically encrypted
    3. Available to all instance types
    4. Existing volumes can be encrypted
    5. Shared volumes can be encrypted
  14. How can you secure data at rest on an EBS volume?
    1. Encrypt the volume using the S3 server-side encryption service
    2. Attach the volume to an instance using EC2’s SSL interface.
    3. Create an IAM policy that restricts read and write access to the volume.
    4. Write the data randomly instead of sequentially.
    5. Use an encrypted file system on top of the EBS volume
  15. A user has deployed an application on an EBS backed EC2 instance. For a better performance of application, it requires dedicated EC2 to EBS traffic. How can the user achieve this?
    1. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS dedicated with PIOPS EBS
    2. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS enhanced with PIOPS EBS
    3. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS dedicated with PIOPS EBS
    4. Launch the EC2 instance as EBS optimized with PIOPS EBS
  16. A user is trying to launch an EBS backed EC2 instance under free usage. The user wants to achieve encryption of the EBS volume. How can the user encrypt the data at rest?
    1. Use AWS EBS encryption to encrypt the data at rest (Encryption is allowed on micro instances)
    2. User cannot use EBS encryption and has to encrypt the data manually or using a third party tool (Encryption was not allowed on micro instances before)
    3. The user has to select the encryption enabled flag while launching the EC2 instance
    4. Encryption of volume is not available as a part of the free usage tier
  17. A user is planning to schedule a backup for an EBS volume. The user wants security of the snapshot data. How can the user achieve data encryption with a snapshot?
    1. Use encrypted EBS volumes so that the snapshot will be encrypted by AWS
    2. While creating a snapshot select the snapshot with encryption
    3. By default the snapshot is encrypted by AWS
    4. Enable server side encryption for the snapshot using S3
  18. A user has launched an EBS backed EC2 instance. The user has rebooted the instance. Which of the below mentioned statements is not true with respect to the reboot action?
    1. The private and public address remains the same
    2. The Elastic IP remains associated with the instance
    3. The volume is preserved
    4. The instance runs on a new host computer
  19. A user has launched an EBS backed EC2 instance. What will be the difference while performing the restart or stop/start options on that instance?
    1. For restart it does not charge for an extra hour, while every stop/start it will be charged as a separate hour
    2. Every restart is charged by AWS as a separate hour, while multiple start/stop actions during a single hour will be counted as a single hour
    3. For every restart or start/stop it will be charged as a separate hour
    4. For restart it charges extra only once, while for every stop/start it will be charged as a separate hour
  20. A user has launched an EBS backed instance. The user started the instance at 9 AM in the morning. Between 9 AM to 10 AM, the user is testing some script. Thus, he stopped the instance twice and restarted it. In the same hour the user rebooted the instance once. For how many instance hours will AWS charge the user?
    1. 3 hours
    2. 4 hours
    3. 2 hours
    4. 1 hour
  21. You are running a database on an EC2 instance, with the data stored on Elastic Block Store (EBS) for persistence At times throughout the day, you are seeing large variance in the response times of the database queries Looking into the instance with the isolate command you see a lot of wait time on the disk volume that the database’s data is stored on. What two ways can you improve the performance of the database’s storage while maintaining the current persistence of the data? Choose 2 answers
    1. Move to an SSD backed instance
    2. Move the database to an EBS-Optimized Instance
    3. Use Provisioned IOPs EBS
    4. Use the ephemeral storage on an m2.4xLarge Instance Instead
  22. An organization wants to move to Cloud. They are looking for a secure encrypted database storage option. Which of the below mentioned AWS functionalities helps them to achieve this?
    1. AWS MFA with EBS
    2. AWS EBS encryption
    3. Multi-tier encryption with Redshift
    4. AWS S3 server-side storage
  23. A user has stored data on an encrypted EBS volume. The user wants to share the data with his friend’s AWS account. How can user achieve this?
    1. Create an AMI from the volume and share the AMI
    2. Copy the data to an unencrypted volume and then share
    3. Take a snapshot and share the snapshot with a friend
    4. If both the accounts are using the same encryption key then the user can share the volume directly
  24. A user is using an EBS backed instance. Which of the below mentioned statements is true?
    1. The user will be charged for volume and instance only when the instance is running
    2. The user will be charged for the volume even if the instance is stopped
    3. The user will be charged only for the instance running cost
    4. The user will not be charged for the volume if the instance is stopped
  25. A user is planning to use EBS for his DB requirement. The user already has an EC2 instance running in the VPC private subnet. How can the user attach the EBS volume to a running instance?
    1. The user must create EBS within the same VPC and then attach it to a running instance.
    2. The user can create EBS in the same zone as the subnet of instance and attach that EBS to instance. (Should be in the same AZ)
    3. It is not possible to attach an EBS to an instance running in VPC until the instance is stopped.
    4. The user can specify the same subnet while creating EBS and then attach it to a running instance.
  26. A user is creating an EBS volume. He asks for your advice. Which advice mentioned below should you not give to the user for creating an EBS volume?
    1. Take the snapshot of the volume when the instance is stopped
    2. Stripe multiple volumes attached to the same instance
    3. Create an AMI from the attached volume (AMI is created from the snapshot)
    4. Attach multiple volumes to the same instance
  27. An EC2 instance has one additional EBS volume attached to it. How can a user attach the same volume to another running instance in the same AZ?
    1. Terminate the first instance and only then attach to the new instance
    2. Attach the volume as read only to the second instance
    3. Detach the volume first and attach to new instance
    4. No need to detach. Just select the volume and attach it to the new instance, it will take care of mapping internally
  28. What is the scope of an EBS volume?
    1. VPC
    2. Region
    3. Placement Group
    4. Availability Zone

Reference

Amazon_EBS