EC2 Instance Storage

Question 1

What is an EBS Volume?

Answer 1

• EBS: Elastic Block Store
• A network drive (not a physical drive like a USB) that instances can be attached to while they run
• Allows instances to persist data, even after their termination
• Can only be mounted to one instance at a time (at the Cloud Practitioner level)
• Bound to a specific availability zone
• Have a provisioned capacity (size in GBs and IO Operations/Second)

Question 2

What is the ‘Delete on Termination’ attribute for an EBS Volume?

Answer 2

Delete on Termination defines whether the EBS Volume is deleted when the EC2 instance terminates
* The root EBS volume is deleted by default
* All other EBS volumes are not deleted by default

Question 3

What is an EBS Snapshot?

Answer 3

• A backup/snapshot of an EBS Volume at a point in time
• It is not necessary to detach the volume to do a snapshot, but recommended
• Snapshots can be copied across AZs or Regions

Question 4

What is the EBS Snapshot Archive?

Answer 4

• Snapshots can be moved to the ‘archive tier’, which is 75% cheaper
• It takes 24-72 hours to restore a snapshot in the archive

Question 5

What is Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots?

Answer 5

• Recycle Bin holds deleted snapshots so that they can be recovered after accidental deletion
• The retention period can be set from 1 day to 1 year

Question 6

What is an AMI?

Answer 6

• AMI: Amazon Machine Image
• A customisation of an EC2 instance
• Built for a specific region, and can be copied across regions

Question 7

What is involved in the process for creating an AMI?

Answer 7

1. Start an EC2 instance and customise it
2. Stop the instance to maintain data integrity
3. Build the AMI, which will also create EBS snapshots
4. Launch instances from other AMIs

Question 8

What is EC2 Image Builder?

Answer 8

• Used to automate the creation of Virtual Machines or container images
• Auttomates the creation, maintainence, validation and testing of EC2 AMIs
• Can be run on a schedule