2.3.2. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)
💡 First Principle: Amazon EBS provides persistent block storage volumes for EC2 instances, ensuring data durability, consistent performance, and flexibility for operational needs like scaling and backups.
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) provides persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. It's like a virtual hard drive that you can attach to a single EC2 instance.
Key Characteristics of Amazon EBS:
- Block Storage: Provides raw, unformatted block-level storage.
- Persistent: Data stored on an EBS volume persists independently of the running life of the EC2 instance it's attached to.
- Single-Instance Attachment: An EBS volume can typically only be attached to one EC2 instance at a time within the same Availability Zone.
- Durability: EBS volumes are replicated within their Availability Zone to protect against component failure.
- Snapshots: Point-in-time backups of EBS volumes stored in Amazon S3. Used for backup, disaster recovery, or creating new volumes.
- Volume Types: Various types optimized for different performance and cost needs (e.g., SSD-backed for transactional workloads, HDD-backed for throughput-intensive workloads).
- Use Cases: Boot volumes for EC2 instances, primary storage for databases (on EC2), applications requiring high I/O performance.
Scenario: A company needs to attach a persistent storage volume to its EC2 instance that runs a database. The data on this volume must remain even if the EC2 instance is stopped or terminated, and it needs to be backed up regularly.
Reflection Question: How does Amazon EBS, by providing persistent block storage volumes with durability and supporting snapshots for backups, fundamentally ensure data durability and flexibility for your EC2 instances and their applications?
