EC2 Instance Storage

1. An Instance Store provides temporary block-level storage for an EC2 instance. It's disk storage that is physically attached to the host computer with the following characteristics:
   • HDD options
   • Solid-state
   • Size up to 16 TiB
2. Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS): provides block-level storage volumes that you can use with EC2 instances. Because EBS volumes are for data that needs to persist, it’s important to back up the data (snapshots).
   • EBS snapshot is an incremental backup
   • Volume is a network drive you can attach to your instances while they run

Others EC2 storage options are:

• EFS: Network file system, can be attached to 100s of instances in a region
• EFS-IA: cost-optimized storage class for infrequent accessed files
• FSx for Windows: Network File System for Windows servers
• FSx for Lustre: High Performance Computing Linux file system

EBS Volumes

What’s an EBS Volume?

• An EBS (Elastic Block Store) Volume is a network drive you can attach to your instances while they run
• It allows your instances to persist data, even after their termination
• They can only be mounted to one instance at a time (at the CCP level)
• They are bound to a specific availability zone
• Analogy: Think of them as a “network USB stick”
• Free tier: 30 GB of free EBS storage of type General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic per month

EBS Volume

• It’s a network drive (i.e. not a physical drive)
  • It uses the network to communicate the instance, which means there might be a bit of latency
  • It can be detached from an EC2 instance and attached to another one quickly
• It’s locked to an Availability Zone (AZ)
  • An EBS Volume in us-east-1a cannot be attached to us-east-1b
  • To move a volume across, you first need to snapshot it
• Have a provisioned capacity (size in GBs, and IOPS)
  • You get billed for all the provisioned capacity
  • You can increase the capacity of the drive over time

Delete on Termination attribute

• Controls the EBS behaviour when an EC2 instance terminates
  • By default, the root EBS volume is deleted (attribute enabled)
  • By default, any other attached EBS volume is not deleted (attribute disabled)
• This can be controlled by the AWS console / AWS CLI
• Use case: preserve root volume when instance is terminated

EBS Snapshots

• Make a backup (snapshot) of your EBS volume at a point in time
• Not necessary to detach volume to do snapshot, but recommended
• Can copy snapshots across AZ or Region

EBS Snapshots Features

• EBS Snapshot Archive
  • Move a Snapshot to an ”archive tier” that is 75% cheaper
  • Takes within 24 to 72 hours for restoring the archive
• Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots
  • Setup rules to retain deleted snapshots so you can recover them after an accidental deletion
  • Specify retention (from 1 day to 1 year)

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Provides File Storage, multiple clients can access data that is stored in shared file folders. In this approach, a storage server uses block storage with a local file system to organize files. Compared to block storage and object storage, file storage is ideal for use cases in which a large number of services and resources need to access the same data at the same time.

• Amazon EFS is a scalable file system used with AWS Cloud Services and On-premise resources.
• Managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on 100s of EC2
• EFS works with Linux EC2 instances in multi-AZ
• Highly available, scalable, expensive (3x gp2), pay per use, no capacity planning

EFS Infrequent Access (EFS-IA)

• Storage class that is cost-optimized for files not accessed every day
• Up to 92% lower cost compared to EFS Standard
• EFS will automatically move your files to EFS-IA based on the last time they were accessed
• Enable EFS-IA with a Lifecycle Policy
• Example: move files that are not accessed for 60 days to EFS-IA
• Transparent to the applications accessing EFS

Amazon FSx

• Launch 3rd party high-performance file systems on AWS
• Fully managed service
  • FSx for Lustre
  • FSx for Windows File Server
  • FSx for NetApp ONTAP

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

• A fully managed, highly reliable, and scalable Windows native shared file system
• Built on Windows File Server
• Supports SMB protocol & Windows NTFS
• Integrated with Microsoft Active Directory
• Can be accessed from AWS or your on-premise infrastructure

Amazon FSx for Lustre

• A fully managed, high-performance, scalable file storage for High Performance Computing (HPC)
• The name Lustre is derived from “Linux” and “cluster”
• Machine Learning, Analytics, Video Processing, Financial Modeling
• Scales up to 100s GB/s, millions of IOPS, sub-ms latencies

EC2 Instance Store

• EBS volumes are network drives with good but “limited” performance
• If you need a high-performance hardware disk, use EC2 Instance Store
• Better I/O performance
• EC2 Instance Store lose their storage if they’re stopped (ephemeral)
• Good for buffer / cache / scratch data / temporary content
• Risk of data loss if hardware fails
• Backups and Replication are your responsibility

Shared Responsibility Model for EC2 Storage

AMI Overview

• AMI = Amazon Machine Image
• AMI are a customization of an EC2 instance
  • You add your own software, configuration, operating system, monitoring…
  • Faster boot / configuration time because all your software is pre-packaged
• AMI are built for a specific region (and can be copied across regions)
• You can launch EC2 instances from:
  • A Public AMI: AWS provided
  • Your own AMI: you make and maintain them yourself
  • An AWS Marketplace AMI: an AMI someone else made (and potentially sells)

AMI Process (from an EC2 instance)

• Start an EC2 instance and customize it
• Stop the instance (for data integrity)
• Build an AMI – this will also create EBS snapshots
• Launch instances from other AMIs

EC2 Image Builder

• Used to automate the creation of Virtual Machines or container images
• Automate the creation, maintain, validate and test EC2 AMIs
• Can be run on a schedule (weekly, whenever packages are updated, etc…)
• Free service (only pay for the underlying resources)