EC2 Instance Storage
What is EC2 Instance Store?
- EBS volumes are network drives with good but "limited" performance - If you need a high-performance hardware disk, use this - Enables better I/O performance - Lose their storage if they're stopped (ephemeral)
EC2 Instance Store characteristics
- Good for buffer / cache / scratch data / temporary content - Risk of data loss if hardware fails - Backups and Replication are your responsibility
Shared Responsibility Model for EC2 Storage: AWS responsibilities
- Infrastructure - Replication for data for EBS volumes & EFS drives - Replacing faulty hardware - Ensuring their employees cannot access your data
What is Elastic File System?
- Managed NFS (network file system) that can be mounted on EC2 instances - EFS works with Linux EC2 instances in multi-AZ - Highly available, scalable, expensive (3x gp2), pay per use, no capacity planning
EBS Snapshot Archive
- Move a snapshot to an "archive tier" that is 75% cheaper - Takes within 24 to 72 hours for restoring the archive
EBS volumes are
- Network drives attached to one EC2 instance at a time - Mapped to an Availability Zone - Can use EBS Snapshots for backups / transferring EBS volumes across AZs
EBS Snapshots characteristics
- Not necessary to detach EBS volume to do this, but is recommended - Can copy these across AZs or Regions
EFS availability
Amazon EC2 and other AWS compute instances running in multiple Availability Zones within the same AWS Region can access the EFS file system, so that many users can access and share a common data source.
AMI =
Amazon Machine Image
What is an EBS Volume?
Elastic Block Store A network drive you can attach to your instances while they run
What is Amazon FSx?
Enables you to launch 3rd party high-performance file systems on AWS
EC2 instances can access files on an EFS file system across many AZs but not across VPCs and Regions. T/F?
False EC2 instances can access files in EFS file systems across many AZ, Regions, and VPCs
Where can you find a third party's AMI so you can use it to launch your EC2 Instance?
AWS Marketplace AMIs
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
- 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
EBS Volume characteristics
- A network drive (i.e., not a physical drive) - Locked to an Availability Zone (AZ) - Have a provisioned capacity (size in GBs and IOPS)
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)
Regarding EBS, what is the 'Delete on Termination' attribute?
- Controls the EBS behavior 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
EBS Snapshots features
- EBS Snapshot Archive - Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots
Shared Responsibility Model for EC2 Storage: customer's responsibilities
- Setting up backup / snapshot procedures - Setting up data encryption - Responsibility of any data on the drives - Understanding the risk of using EC2 Instance Store
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)
AMI Process (from an EC2 Instance)
- 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
EC2 Image Builder characteristics
- Used to automate the creation of Virtual Machines or container images - Automates the processes of creating, maintaining, validating, and testing EC2 AMIs - Can be run on a schedule (weekly, whenever packages are updated, etc.) - Free service (only pay for the underlying resources)
EBS Volume as a network drive
- Uses the network to communicate with the instance, which means there might be a bit of latency - Can be detached from an EC2 instance and attached to another one quickly
EBS Volumes have a provisioned capacity, therefore,
- You get billed for the provisioned capacity - You can increase the capacity of the drive over time
EBS Volume free tier includes
30 GB of free EBS storage of type General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic per month
What is an EBS Snapshot?
A backup of your EBS Volume at a point in time
What is Amazon Machine Image?
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 - Built for a specific region (and can be copied across regions)
AMI is
A customized ready-to-use EC2 instance
Amazon FSx for Lustre
A fully managed, high-performance, scalable file storage for High Performance Computing (HPC) - The name _______ 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
EFS
A simple, serverless, set-and-forget elastic file system. With this file system service, you can create a file system, mount the file system on an Amazon EC2 instance, and then read and write data to and from your file system. You can mount this type of file system in your virtual private cloud (VPC), through the Network File System versions 4.0 and 4.1 (NFSv4) protocol.
EBS vs EFS
An Amazon EBS volume stores data in a single Availability Zone. To attach an Amazon EC2 instance to an EBS volume, both the Amazon EC2 instance and the EBS volume must reside within the same Availability Zone. Amazon EFS is a regional service. It stores data in and across multiple Availability Zones. The duplicate storage enables you to access data concurrently from all the Availability Zones in the Region where a file system is located. Additionally, on-premises servers can access Amazon EFS using AWS Direct Connect.
What is an EBS Volume tied to?
An availability zone EBS Volumes are tied to only one availability zone
Lifetime of an instance store
An instance store volume exists only during the lifetime of the instance to which it is attached. You can't configure an instance store volume to persist beyond the lifetime of its associated instance.
What are EBS snapshots?
Backups of your EBS volume at a point in time
Instance Store pricing
Instance store volumes are included as part of the instance's usage cost.
EFS - Infrequent access storage class read and write costs
You are charged a fee each time you read from or write to one of these resources This EFS storage class is cost-optimized for files accessed less frequently. Data stored on this EFS storage class costs less than Standard and you will pay a fee each time you read from or write to a file.
Mount Target
Provides an IP address for an NFSv4 endpoint at which you can mount an Amazon EFS file system. You mount your file system using its Domain Name Service (DNS) name, which resolves to the IP address of the EFS mount target in the same Availability Zone as your EC2 instance. You can create one mount target in each Availability Zone in an AWS Region.
The following illustration shows multiple EC2 instances accessing an Amazon EFS file system that is configured with Standard storage classes from multiple Availability Zones in an AWS Region.
See image
The following illustration shows multiple EC2 instances accessing an Amazon EFS file system using One Zone storage from different Availability Zones in an AWS Region.
See image
EFS Infrequent Access (EFS-IA)
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
How can you mount your Amazon EFS file systems on your on-premises data center servers?
You can mount your Amazon EFS file systems on your on-premises data center servers when connected to your Amazon VPC with AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN
EBS Volumes are bound to
These are bound to a specific availability zone.
EBS Volumes can be mounted to
These can be mounted to only one instance at a time (at the cloud practitioner level)
EBS Volumes allow
This service allows your instances to persist data, even after their termination
EC2 Instance Store
This storage service provides temporary block-level storage for your instance. This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer. This is ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content. It can also be used to store temporary data that you replicate across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.
Instance store volumes are attached only at instance launch. You can't attach instance store volumes after launch. You can't detach an instance store volume from one instance and attach it to a different instance. T/F?
True
EBS Volumes CANNOT be attached to multiple EC2 instances at a time. True or false?
True EBS Volumes can be attached to only one EC2 Instance at a time, but EC2 instances can have multiple EBS volumes attached to them
An EBS Volume is a network drive you can attach to your instances while they run, so your instances' data persist even after their termination. True or false?
True EBS Volumes allow instances' data to persist even after their termination
EBS Snapshots are stored incrementally so you are billed
You are billed only for the changed blocks stored, in this case
What do you do if you want to move an EBS volume across Availability Zones?
You need to take a snapshot of it to move it across AZs.
EFS-IA is transparent to the applications accessing EFS
Your applications don't need to know where the file is, it'll access the file in the same way every time, and EFS-IA will do cost optimization in in the background
Which service can be used to automate image management processes? a) AMI b) EC2 Image Builder c) EBS Snapshots d) IAM
b) EC2 Image Builder An automated pipeline for the creation, maintenance, validation, sharing, and deployment of Linux or Windows images for use on AWS and on-prem
Which of the following is a fully managed native Microsoft Windows file system? a) EFS b) FSx c) EBS
b) FSx Makes it easy and cost-effective to launch and run popular file systems that are fully managed by AWS.
Which statement is CORRECT regarding EC2 Instance Store? a) It is not good to use as a disk to cache content b) It has a better I/O performance, but the data is lost if the EC2 Instance is terminated c) Your data is always safe with EC2 Instance Store
b) It has a better I/O performance, but the data is lost if the EC2 Instance is terminated
What are AMIs NOT used for? a) Add your own software license b) Add your own configuration c) Add your own operating-system d) Add your own IP addresses
d) Add your own IP addresses You cannot use AMIs to add your IP addresses. IP addresses are added to an instance as you create it.
Which EC2 Storage would you use to create a shared network file system for your EC2 Instances? a) EBS Volume b) EC2 Instance Store c) EBS Snapshots d) EFS
d) EFS A fully managed service that makes it easy to set up, scale, and cost-optimize file storage in the Amazon Cloud
