EC2 Instance Storage

Question 1

What’s an EBS Volume?

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

What does the Delete on Termination attribute does - EBS ?

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

What is the purpose of EBS Snapshots ?

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

What are the EBS Snapshots Features ?

Answer 4

• 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

Question 5

What is the AMI ?

Answer 5

• 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)

Question 6

What is the AMI Process (from an EC2 instance) ?

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

What is the EC2 Image Builder and what is it used for ?

Answer 7

EC2 Image Builder is an AWS service that simplifies the creation, maintenance, and validation of Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), ensuring secure and up-to-date images.

• 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)

Question 8

What is EC2 Instance Store and what is it good for ?

Answer 8

An EC2 Instance Store provides temporary block-level storage for Amazon EC2 instances, offering high-performance storage located directly on the host node.

• 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

Block-level storage is a concept in data storage which represents data as blocks, or ‘chunks’, each with its own address but with no additional information (metadata) to provide more context for what that block of data is.

In other words, block-level storage operates at a lower level of control, handling files in blocks of data (often a sequence of bytes or bits) and leaving the organization of these blocks to the operating system or the application that uses the storage.

This type of storage is commonly used in Storage Area Network (SAN) environments and for storage systems like hard drives, SSDs, and EC2 instance stores. It is particularly suitable for handling large amounts of data in a consistent, fast, and reliable manner, making it ideal for applications like databases or transactional applications.

Block-level storage is different from file-level storage where data is stored in files and directories, and the storage system is aware of things like file metadata, hierarchy, permissions etc.

Question 9

What is EC2 Instance Store and what is it good for ?

Answer 9

An EC2 Instance Store provides temporary block-level storage for Amazon EC2 instances, offering high-performance storage located directly on the host node.

• 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

Question 10

What is EFS – Elastic File System ?

Answer 10

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is a scalable, cloud-based file storage service for applications that run on AWS.

• 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

Question 11

What is EFS Infrequent Access (EFS-IA) ?

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

What is the Shared Responsibility Model for EC2 Storage ?

Answer 12

Question 13

What is Amazon FSx ?

Answer 13

Amazon FSx is a fully managed service that provides cost-effective, scalable file storage with the compatibility and features of popular open-source and commercially-licensed file systems.

• Launch 3rd party high-performance file systems on AWS
• Fully managed service

Question 14

What is Amazon FSx for Windows File Server ?

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

What is Amazon FSx for Lustre ?

Answer 15

• 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