3.1.1.2. EBS Volume Types and Performance

💡 First Principle: EBS volume types provide block storage with distinct performance characteristics (IOPS, throughput) and cost structures. Their core purpose is to enable selection of the optimal balance for diverse workload needs, ensuring efficient resource utilization.

EBS volume types provide block storage with distinct performance characteristics (IOPS, throughput) and cost structures. Their core purpose is to enable selection of the optimal balance for diverse workload needs, ensuring efficient resource utilization.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides persistent block storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Selecting the correct EBS volume type is crucial for matching storage performance to application requirements and optimizing costs.

Key EBS Volume Types and their Characteristics:

• "gp3" (General Purpose SSD): A versatile, cost-effective SSD option offering a balance of price and performance. It allows independent provisioning of IOPS (up to 16,000) and throughput (up to 1,000 MB/s), making it suitable for a wide range of transactional and boot volumes.
• "io2" (Provisioned IOPS SSD): Designed for the most demanding, mission-critical transactional workloads, such as large databases. It delivers consistent, very high IOPS (up to 64,000 for io2, up to 256,000 for io2 Block Express) and enhanced durability.
• "st1" (Throughput Optimized HDD): A low-cost magnetic storage type optimized for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads. Ideal for big data, log processing, and data warehouses where sequential reads/writes are dominant.
• "sc1" (Cold HDD): The lowest-cost magnetic option. Best suited for infrequently accessed data and large sequential workloads. It's primarily used for cold data storage, offering significant cost savings for archival purposes where performance is not a primary concern.

Scenario: For a general-purpose web application requiring balanced price and performance, selecting a gp3 volume is ideal; however, a high-performance transactional database demands io2 Block Express for its superior IOPS and durability.

Visual: EBS Volume Types and Use Cases

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⚠️ Common Pitfall: Using an io2 volume for a workload that only requires general-purpose performance, leading to unnecessary overspending.

Key Trade-Offs:

• Performance vs. Cost: Higher performance disk types (e.g., io2) are significantly more expensive per GB than lower performance ones (e.g., sc1). Balancing these is key.

Reflection Question: How does choosing the correct EBS volume type (e.g., between gp3 for balanced performance and io2 for high IOPS) directly impact both application performance and operational costs, and what factors should you consider when making this choice?