AWS EC2 Storage Types: EBS (Elastic Block Store) vs Instance Store
EBS
Think of EBS as a network-attached drive. It’s slower than a local drive (or in AWS parlance, instance storage) but maintains persistence across shutdowns and reboots.
There are two types of EBS: Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and Solid State Drive (SSD).
| SSD (Best for Random Access Ops) | HDD (Best for Sequential Access Ops) |
|---|---|
| Provisioned IOPS — Used for I/O-intensive database systems | Throughput Optimized — Big data analysis, data warehousing, log processing |
General Purpose — Boot volumes, dev & test systems | Cold — Cold data which requires few scans per day |
EBS can be configured as the following volume types:
- General Purpose SSD (gp2) [default]
- Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)
- Cold HDD (sc1)
- Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
- Magnetic (standard)
Input/output operations per second (IOPS)
Throughput is about the data transfer speed. IOPS refers to the time taken for a storage system to perform an Input or Output operation per second from start to finish.
https://techburst.io/aws-ebs-49d1912d45c0
Root device vs. block devices
Instance Store
An instance store is a physically attached device that loses data each time the instance is rebooted. It’s faster because it’s local as there’s no network latency.
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