EC2 Storage

Question 1

What is an EBS volume?

Answer 1

• A network drive attached to an EC2 instance that persists data
• Locked to an AZ
• Has a provisioned capacity
• Can be detached and attached to another instance

Question 2

What is EBS Snapshot?

Answer 2

• Used to make a backup of EBS volume at a point in time
• Can copy snapshots across AZ or region
• Right click on volume - create Snapshot
• Stored in S3

Question 3

What is AMI?

Answer 3

• Amazon Machine Image - SAAS
• Customization of an EC2 instance
• Region specific, though can be copied (*)
• Available from Public AMI, your own AMI, AWS Marketplace AMI - Buy and sell

Question 4

What is EC2 Instance Store?

Answer 4

• High performance disk
• Attached to single EC2 instance, not shared
• Much faster than volume
• Ephemeral: data lost when stopped
• Used for cache, temp, scratch
• If need to save data, your responsibility

Question 5

What is Elastic File System?

Answer 5

• Manage Network File System that can be mounted to 100’s of EC2 instances
• Works ONLY with Linux
• Multi AZ
• Highly available, scalable, expensive
• No need for capacity planning

Question 6

What is EC2 Image Builder?

Answer 6

• Used to automate the create of Virtual Machines or container images. Create/Maintain/Validate/Test/Distribute
• Used for EC2 AMI’s
• Can copy the AMI to different regions