Amazon EBS Volume: What is it?
An Amazon EBS volume is a powerful block-level storage device that you may attach to your instances. Once a volume has been connected to an instance, it can be utilized in the same way as a traditional hard drive. EBS has movable volume controls. You can dynamically expand the size of current-generation volumes connected to current-generation instance types, modify the provisioned IOPS capacity, and change the volume type on live production volumes.For data that must be updated often, such as the system drive of an instance or the storage for a database application, Amazon EBS volumes can serve as the primary storage option. They can also be used in throughput-intensive applications that do continuous disk scans. EBS volumes last longer than the life of an EC2 instance.
Multiple EBS volumes can be linked to a single instance. The volume must be in the same Availability Zone as the instance. Depending on the volume and instance types, Multi-Attach can mount a volume to several instances at once.
Types of EBS volumes
Amazon EBS offers the following volume types: General Purpose SSD (gp2 and gp3), Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 and io2), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), Cold HDD (sc1), and Magnetic (standard). You can modify the cost and performance of your storage to meet the needs of your applications because they differ in price and performance characteristics.The total amount of storage that you can use with your account is limited
Benefits and features of Amazon EBS volume
The benefits that EBS volumes provide are not available with instance store volumes.- Data accessibility
- Persistence of Data
- Data encryption
- Data security
- Pictures
- Flexibility
Data accessibility
An EBS volume is automatically replicated inside its Availability Zone during creation to protect against data loss due to a single hardware component failure. An EBS volume can be connected to any EC2 instance that is located inside the same Availability Zone. Once joined, a volume appears as a native block device, just like a hard drive or other physical device. The volume can then be used by the instance just like a local drive would. When you connect to the instance and format the EBS disk using a file system—such as NTFS for Windows instances or Ext4 for Linux instances—applications can be installed.Attaching multiple volumes to a named device allows you to strip data across the volumes, which improves I/O and throughput performance.
Io1 and io2 EBS volumes can be connected to up to 16 Nitro-based instances. If not, an EBS volume can be linked to a single instance.
You can get root device volumes for instances that EBS supports, as well as monitoring information for your EBS volumes, for free.
Persistence of Data
An EBS volume is off-instance storage that can last longer than the life of an instance. You will continue to be billed for the volume usage as long as the data is present.EBS volumes linked to a running instance will instantly split from the instance with its data intact upon instance termination if you uncheck the Delete on Termination check box when configuring EBS volumes for your instance on the EC2 dashboard. Reattaching the volume to a new instance then allows for a quick recovery. If the Delete on Termination check box is checked, the volume(s) will be erased when the EC2 instance is shut down. An instance backed by EBS can be stopped and restarted without affecting the data on the connected disk. The volume remains fixed throughout the stop-start cycle.
This enables you to process and store the data on your volume indefinitely by only using the processing and storage resources when necessary. The data stays on the volume unless it is specifically erased. The actual block storage used by deleted EBS volumes is overwritten with zeroes or cryptographically pseudorandom data before being assigned to a new disk. If you are dealing with sensitive data, you should consider manually encrypting it or storing it on a volume that has been encrypted by Amazon EBS.
The root EBS volume generated and linked to an instance at launch is immediately deleted when the instance is terminated. You can alter this behavior by starting the instance with the DeleteOnTermination flag set to false. This modified value makes the volume persistent even after the instance is terminated and enables you to link it to another instance.
Additional EBS volumes produced and associated to an instance at launch are by default not removed upon termination of that instance. By setting the value of the DeleteOnTermination flag to true when you start the instance, you can change this behavior. When the instance is stopped, the volumes are erased due to this altered value.
Encrypting data
You can use the Amazon EBS encryption capability to build encrypted EBS volumes for easier data encryption. Encryption is supported by every EBS volume type. For regulated or audited data and applications, encrypted EBS volumes can be used to satisfy a variety of data-at-rest encryption regulations. 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard algorithms (AES-256) and a key infrastructure under Amazon management are used for Amazon EBS encryption. Encryption of data-in-transit from the EC2 instance to Amazon EBS storage takes place on the server hosting the EC2 instance.AWS KMS keys are used by Amazon EBS encryption to create encrypted volumes and any snapshots that are made from them. A default AWS managed KMS key is generated for you automatically the first time you create an encrypted EBS disk in a Region. Unless a customer-managed key is created and utilized, this key is used for Amazon EBS encryption. You have more flexibility when you build your own customer controlled key. You may generate, rotate, disable, define access rules, and audit the encryption keys that are used to safeguard your data.
Data Security
You are shown Amazon EBS volumes as unformatted, raw block devices. These devices are logical devices built on the EBS infrastructure, and before a client uses or re-uses them, the Amazon EBS service makes sure that the devices are logically empty (that is, that the raw blocks are zeroed or that they contain cryptographically pseudorandom data).You can do this on Amazon EBS if your procedures call for all data to be deleted using a particular technique, either before or after use (or both), as outlined in DoD 5220.22-M (National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual) or NIST 800-88 (Guidelines for Media Sanitization). The Amazon EBS service’s underlying storage media will be affected by such block-level activity.
Snapshots
Any EBS volume can be backed up using Amazon EBS, and a duplicate of the volume’s contents can be written to Amazon S3 and redundantly stored in several Availability Zones. To take a snapshot, the volume does not have to be connected to an active instance. You can take a snapshot of a volume on a regular basis to use as a baseline for future volumes when you write data to it. You can relocate volumes between Availability Zones or create several new EBS volumes using these snapshots. Automatic encryption is used for snapshots of encrypted EBS volumes.A new volume created from a snapshot is a perfect replica of the volume that existed at the moment the snapshot was captured. EBS volumes are automatically encrypted when they are generated from encrypted snapshots. This feature allows you to create a duplicate volume in a different Availability Zone, which you can designate if you’d like. The snapshots can be made public or shared with particular AWS accounts.
The size of the data being backed up, not the size of the source volume, determines the charges you incur while creating snapshots in Amazon S3. Incremental snapshots are subsequent images of the same volume. Only the updated and new data that has been written to the volume since the last snapshot is included, and you are only billed for this updated and new data.
Because snapshots are incremental backups, they only save the volume’s blocks that have changed since your last snapshot. Only the 5 GiB of modified data is written to Amazon S3 if you have a volume with 100 GiB of data and only 5 GiB of that data has changed since your last snapshot. The snapshot deletion procedure is made to require that you keep only the most current snapshot, even when snapshots are saved progressively.
You can tag your volumes and snapshots with any metadata you like to help organize and manage them.
You can use AWS Backup or Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager to automatically backup your volumes.
Adaptability
Live configuration changes during production are supported by EBS volumes. Without affecting service, you can change the volume type, volume size, and IOPS capacity.EBS Volume pricing
You just pay for what you provision when using Amazon EBS. Below is a list of prices for Amazon EBS volumes. If you need more information see Amazon EBS pricing page.
| Volume Type | Price |
|---|---|
| General Purpose SSD (gp3) – Storage | $0.096/GB-month |
| General Purpose SSD (gp3) – IOPS | 3,000 IOPS free and $0.006/provisioned IOPS-month over 3,000 |
| General Purpose SSD (gp3) – Throughput | 125 MB/s free and $0.048/provisioned MB/s-month over 125 |
| General Purpose SSD (gp2) Volumes | $0.12 per GB-month of provisioned storage |
| Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) – Storage | $0.138/GB-month |
| Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) – IOPS | $0.072/provisioned IOPS-month up to 32,000 IOPS |
| $0.050/provisioned IOPS-month from 32,001 to 64,000 IOPS | |
| $0.035/provisioned IOPS-month for greater than 64,000 IOPS | |
| Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) Volumes | $0.138 per GB-month of provisioned storage AND $0.072 per provisioned IOPS-month |
| Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Volumes | $0.054 per GB-month of provisioned storage |
| Cold HDD (sc1) Volumes | $0.018 per GB-month of provisioned storage |
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