Comparison between Amazon EBS vs. Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Overview

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Amazon EC2 Instance Store are two storage options that can be used with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).  In this blog, let’s see the comparison between Amazon EBS and Amazon EC2 Instance Store.

Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Amazon EC2 Instance Store

Amazon EC2 instance store gives temporary (ephemeral) block-level storage for your instance. Instance stores resemble Amazon EBS capacity in the initial setup options. However, their architecture most closely resembles direct attached disk drives. An instance store provides sub milli second latencies between the EC2 instance and the storage.

The data in an instance store continues only during the lifetime of its associated EC2 instance. Data in the instance store endures if an instance reboots (intentionally or unintentionally).

However, the data within the instance store is lost under any of the following circumstances:

• The underlying disk drive fails
• The instance hibernates
• The instance terminates
• The instance stops

Every storage block in the instance store is reset when you stop, terminate, or an instance. As a result, your data cannot be accessible through the instance store of another instance.

Henceforth, avoid using instance stores for critical, long-term data. Choose a more persistent data storage option, like Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, or Amazon EFS.

The instance storage is best suited for the following scenarios:

• The temporary storage of constantly changing information, such as caches, buffers, scratch data, and other temporary information.
• Data replicated across several instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.

Volume in Instance Store

Several instance types use SSDs with NVMe or SATA architectures to deliver high random I/O performance. This is a decent choice when you need capacity with extremely low latency but don’t need the data to remain after the instance terminates.

Amazon EBS

Amazon EBS is a network-attached storage option that provides persistent block-level storage volumes for EC2 instances. EBS volumes can be created, attached to an EC2 instance during start, or added later. They can also be backed up and restored as snapshots. Applications seeking frequent, consistent access to data and data preservation beyond the application’s lifespan are suited for EBS volumes.

For backup and disaster recovery purposes, it enables the creation of point-in-time snapshots of EBS volumes.

The management of EBS volumes is independent of managing the Amazon EC2 instances to which they are connected. An existing EBS volume can be detached from one EC2 instance and reattached to another.

Types of Volume:

For various applications, Amazon EBS offers a variety of volume types you can leverage to optimize storage performance and cost. These volume types can be classified into two main groups: HDD-backed storage for throughput-intensive workloads, including MapReduce and log processing, and SSD-backed storage for transactional workloads, such as databases, virtual desktops, and boot volumes.

Select the volume type best suits your application and use case needs. You can choose between multiple volume types.

• HDD-Based Volumes

For frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads, HDD-based volumes offer Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), which is also the least expensive. For less regularly accessible data, use a cold HDD (sc1).

• SSD-Based Volumes

General Purpose SSD volumes and Provisioned IOPS SSD volumes are the two SSD- based Volumes levels. For transactional applications, such as virtual desktops, test and development environments, and interactive gaming software, general purpose SSD volumes (gp3 and gp2) balance cost and performance.

The highest performance EBS volumes (io2 and io1) for your most demanding transactional applications, like SAP HANA, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2, are provisioned IOPS SSD volumes.

Conclusion

Choosing between Amazon EC2 Instance Store and Amazon EBS depends on specific needs.

Amazon EC2 Instance Store is suited for temporary storage needs where high performance and low latency are critical. Amazon EBS, on the other hand, is ideal for long-term data storage with better durability and accessibility features.

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