Features of AWS Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

Here are the key features of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  1. Data Availability and Durability: EBS volumes are designed for high availability and durability, with different volume types offering 99.8% to 99.999% durability and an annual failure rate of 0.1% to 0.001%. Data is automatically replicated across multiple servers within an Availability Zone to prevent data loss.

  2. Data Archiving: EBS Snapshots Archive provides a low-cost storage tier to archive full, point-in-time copies of EBS Snapshots for long-term retention, such as for regulatory and compliance reasons.

  3. Security Features: EBS offers seamless encryption of data volumes, boot volumes, and snapshots, eliminating the need to manage a separate key management infrastructure. You can also use tags and IAM resource-level permissions to enforce security on EBS volumes.

  4. Flexible Volume Types: EBS offers different volume types, such as SSD-backed volumes (gp2, gp3, io1, io2) and HDD-backed volumes (st1, sc1), to cater to a variety of workload requirements and performance needs.

  5. Scalability: EBS volumes can be dynamically resized, allowing you to scale storage capacity as your needs change, without downtime or performance impact.

  6. Integration with EC2: EBS volumes can be attached to Amazon EC2 instances, providing block-level storage that can be used as file systems or raw block devices.

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a block-level storage service provided by AWS that allows you to create and attach virtual disks to your Amazon EC2 instances. EBS volumes are designed for low-latency and high-throughput performance, making them suitable for a wide range of workloads, including:

  • Databases: EBS volumes can store data for databases, providing persistent and durable storage. 
  • File systems: EBS volumes can be used to create file systems, such as Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), which provides a scalable and highly available file storage solution. 
  • Backup and recovery: EBS volumes can be used to create snapshots, which can be used to restore data or create new volumes. 
  • Containerized applications: EBS volumes can be used to provide storage for containerized applications running on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) or AWS Fargate. 

EBS volumes come in different types, each optimized for different use cases: 

  • General Purpose SSD (gp2/gp3): Balanced performance and cost, suitable for a wide range of workloads. 
  • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2): High-performance storage for mission-critical applications.
  • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1): Low-cost storage for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads.
  • Cold HDD (sc1): Low-cost storage for infrequently accessed data.

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