AWS Foundation and Architecture

Module 4: Elastic Block Store

(EBS)

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Table of Contents
4.1. Block Store Types for AWS EC2......................................................................................... 4
4.2. Core Knowledge: EBS Backed vs Instance Store Backed EC2 Instances ...................... 8
4.3. EBS Snapshots..................................................................................................................... 11
4.4. EBS Encryption ................................................................................................................... 11
4.5. Changing the Encryption State of an EBS Volume ....................................................... 12
4.6. Sharing EBS Snapshots ...................................................................................................... 13
4.7. Creating AMIs from EBS-Backed EC2 Instances ........................................................... 14
4.8. EBS Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)................................................... 17
4.9. EBS Volumes ....................................................................................................................... 19

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AWS Foundation and Architecture

Introduction

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides block level storage volumes for
use with EC2 instances. EBS volumes are highly available and reliable storage
volumes that can be attached to any running instance that is in the same Availability
Zone. EBS volumes that are attached to an EC2 instance are exposed as storage
volumes that persist independently from the life of the instance. With Amazon EBS,
you pay only for what you use.
Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:

• Understand how to use Block Storage to provision persistent storage for
resources running on AWS

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4.1. Block Store Types for AWS EC2

Amazon EBS provides the following volume types which differ in performance
characteristics and price so that you can tailor your storage performance and
cost to the need of your applications.
The volumes types are divided into two categories:
• SSD-backed volumes which are optimized for transactional workloads
involving a frequent read or write operations with small I/O size, where
the dominant performance attribute is IOPS.
• HDD-backed volumes which are optimized for large streaming
workloads where throughput (measured in MiB/s) is a better
performance measure than IOPS.
The table given below describes the use cases and performance characteristics
for each volume type:
Solid-State Drives (SSD) Hard disk Drives (HDD)

Volume General Purpose Provisioned Throughput Cold HDD (sc1)

Type SSD (gp2)* IOPS SSD (io1) Optimized
HDD (st1)

Description General purpose Highest- Low-cost HDD Lowest cost

SSD volume that performance volume HDD volume
balances the price SSD volume for designed for designed for
and the mission-critical frequently less frequently
performance for a low-latency or accessed, accessed
wide variety of high- throughput- workloads
workloads throughput intensive
workloads workloads

Use Cases • Recommended • Critical • Streaming • Throughput

for most business workloads -oriented
workloads application requiring storage for
• System boot that require consistent, large
volumes sustained fast volumes of
• Virtual IOPS throughput data that is
desktops performanc at a low infrequently
• Low-latency e, or more price accessed
interactive than 10,000 • Big data • Scenarios
apps IOPS or 160 • Data where the
• Development MiB/s of warehouses lowest
and test throughput • Log storage cost
environments per volume processing is important

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AWS Foundation and Architecture

• Large • Cannot be a • Cannot be a

database boot boot
workloads volume volume
such as:
o Mongo
DB
o Cassan
dra
o Microso
ft SQL
Server
o MySQL
o Postgre
SQL
o Oracle
API Name gp2 io1 st1 sc1
Volume Size 1 GiB - 16 TiB 4 GiB - 16 TiB 500 GiB - 16 TiB 500 GiB - 16 TiB
Maximum 10,000 32,000*** 500 250
IOPS**/
Volume
Maximum 160 MiB/s 500 MiB/s† 500 MiB/s 250 MiB/s
Throughput/
Volume
Max. IOPS/ 80,000 80,000 80,000 80,000
Instance
Maximum 1,750 MiB/s 1,750 MiB/s 1,750 MiB/s 1,750 MiB/s
Throughput/
Instance††
Dominant IOPS IOPS MiB/s MiB/s
Performance
Attribute

General Purpose SSD (gp2) Volumes

General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes offer cost-effective storage that is ideal for a
broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver single-digit millisecond
latencies and has ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended period of time.
Baseline performance scales linearly at 3 IOPS per GiB of volume size between a
minimum of 100 IOPS (at 33.33 GiB and below) and a maximum of 10,000 IOPS
(at 3,334 GiB and above). AWS designs gp2 volumes to deliver the provisioned
performance 99% of the time.
• Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) Volumes
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes are designed to meet the needs of
I/O-intensive workloads, particularly the database workloads that are
sensitive to storage performance and consistency. Unlike gp2, which uses
a bucket and credit model to calculate the performance, an io1volume

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allows you to specify a consistent IOPS rate when you create the volume,
and Amazon EBS delivers within 10 percent of the provisioned IOPS
performance 99.9 percent of the time over a given year.
• Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) Volumes
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes provide low-cost magnetic
storage that defines the performance in terms of throughput rather than
IOPS. This volume type is a good fit for large, sequential workloads such
as Amazon EMR, ETL, data warehouses, and log processing.
Bootable st1 volumes are not supported.
• Throughput Magnetic (Standard)
Magnetic volumes are backed by magnetic drives and are suited for
workloads where data is accessed infrequently, and scenarios where low-
cost storage for small volume sizes is important. These volumes deliver
approximately 100 IOPS on average with burst capability of up to
hundreds of IOPS and they can range in size from 1 GiB to 1 TiB.
Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes provide low-cost magnetic
storage that defines the performance in terms of throughput rather than
IOPS. This volume type is a good fit for large, sequential workloads such
as Amazon EMR, ETL, data warehouses, and log processing.
Bootable st1 volumes are not supported.
• Cold HDD (sc1) Volumes
Cold HDD (sc1) volumes provide low-cost magnetic storage that defines
the performance in terms of throughput rather than IOPS. With a lower
throughput limit than st1, sc1 is ideal for large, sequential cold-data
workloads. If you require infrequent access to your data and are looking
to save costs, sc1 provides inexpensive block storage.
Bootable sc1 volumes are not supported.
Features of Amazon EBS
• You can create EBS General Purpose SSD (gp2), Provisioned IOPS SSD
(io1), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), and Cold HDD (sc1) volumes
up to 16 TiB in size. You can mount these volumes as devices on your
Amazon EC2 instances. You can mount multiple volumes on the same
instance, but each volume can be attached to only one instance at a time.
You can dynamically change the configuration of a volume attached to an
instance.
• With General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes, you can expect base
performance of 3 IOPS/GiB with the ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for
extended period of time. Gp2 volumes are ideal for a broad range of use
cases such as boot volumes, small and medium-size databases, and
development and test environments. Gp2 volumes support up to 10,000
IOPS and 160 MB/s of throughput.

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• With Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes, you can provision a specific
level of I/O performance. Io1 volumes support up to 32,000 IOPS and 500
MB/s of throughput. This allows you to predictably scale to tens to
thousands of IOPS per EC2 instance.
• Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) volumes provide low-cost magnetic
storage that defines performance in terms of throughput rather than
IOPS. With throughput of up to 500 MiB/s, this volume type is a good for
large, sequential workloads such as Amazon EMR, ETL, data
warehouses, and log processing.
• Cold HDD (sc1) volumes provide low-cost magnetic storage that defines
the performance in terms of throughput rather than IOPS. With
throughput of up to 250 MiB/s, sc1 is ideal for large, sequential, cold-data
workloads. If you require in frequent access to your data and are looking
to save costs, sc1 provides inexpensive block storage.
• EBS volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices. You can create
a file system on top of these volumes or use them in any other way you
would use a block device like a hard drive.
• You can use encrypted EBS volumes to meet a wide range of data-at-rest
encryption requirements for regulated or audited data and applications.
• You can create point-in-time snapshots of EBS volumes which are
persisted to Amazon S3. Snapshots protect data for long-term durability,
and can be used as the starting point for new EBS volumes. The same
snapshot can be used to instantiate as many volumes as you wish. These
snapshots can be copied across AWS regions.
• EBS volumes are created in a specific Availability Zone, and can then be
attached to any instances in that Availability Zone. To make a volume
available outside the Availability Zone, you can create a snapshot and
restore that snapshot to a new volume anywhere in that region. You can
copy snapshots to other regions and then restore those to new volumes
there. This makes it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for
geographical expansion, data center migration, and disaster recovery.
• A large repository of public data set snapshots can be restored to EBS
volumes and can be integrated into AWS Cloud-based applications
seamlessly.
• Performance metrics such as bandwidth, throughput, latency, and
average queue length are available through the AWS Management
Console. These metrics, provided by Amazon CloudWatch allow you to
monitor the performance of your volumes to make sure that you are
providing enough performance for your applications without paying for
resources you do not need.

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4.2. Core Knowledge: EBS Backed vs Instance Store Backed EC2 Instances
AWS EBS vs Instance Store Overview
• EC2 instances support two types for block level storage:
o Elastic Block Store (EBS)
o Instance Store
• EC2 Instances can be launched using either Elastic Block Store (EBS) or
Instance Store volume as root volumes and additional volumes.
• EC2 instances can be launched by choosing between AMIs backed by
Amazon EC2 instance store and AMIs backed by Amazon EBS. However,
AWS recommends the use of AMIs backed by Amazon EBS to launch
faster and use persistent storage.
Types of Storage
• Instance Store (Ephemeral storage)

An Instance store backed instance is an EC2 instance using an Instance store as

root device volume created from a template stored in Amazon S3. Instance store
volumes access storage from disks that are physically attached to the host
computer. When an Instance stored instance is launched, the image that is used
to boot the instance is copied to the root volume (typically sda1). Instance store
provides temporary block-level storage for instances. Data on an instance store
volume persists only during the life of the associated instance; if an instance is
stopped or terminated, any data on instance store volumes is lost.

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Key points for Instance Store Backed Instance

•Boot time is slower than EBS backed volumes and is usually less than five
minutes.
• It can be selected as Root Volume and attached as additional volumes.
• Instance store backed Instances can be of maximum 10GiB volume size.
• Instance store volume can be attached as additional volumes only when
the instance is being launched and cannot be attached once the instance is
up and running.
• Instance store backed instances cannot be stopped as AWS does not
guarantee that the instance would be launched in the same host once it is
stopped and started.
• Data on Instance store volume is lost in following scenarios:
o Failure of an underlying drive.
o Stopping an EBS-backed instance where Instance store are additional
volumes.
o Termination of the instance.
o Data on Instance store volume is not lost when the instance is rebooted.
o AMI creation requires usage on AMI tools and needs to be executed
from the server.
o Instance store backed Instances cannot be upgraded.
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

An “EBS-backed” instance is the root device for an instance launched from the
AMI which is an Amazon EBS volume created from an Amazon EBS snapshot.

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An EBS volume behaves like a raw, unformatted, external block device that can
be attached to a single instance and are not physically attached to the Instance
host computer (more like a network attached storage).
Volume persists independently from the running life of an instance. After an
EBS volume is attached to an instance, you can use it like any other physical
hard drive. EBS volume can be detached from one instance and can be attached
to another instance.
EBS volumes can be created as encrypted volumes using the Amazon EBS
encryption feature.
Key Points for EBS Backed Instance
• Boot time is very fast usually less than a minute.
• EBS backed Instance can be selected as Root Volume and attached as
additional volumes.
• EBS backed Instances can be of maximum 16TiB volume size depending
upon the OS.
• EBS volume can be attached as additional volumes when the instance is
launched and even when the Instance is up and running.
• Data on the EBS volume is lost for EBS Root volume, if Delete On
Termination flag is disabled or enabled, by default.
• Data on the EBS volume is lost for attached EBS volumes, if the Delete On
Termination flag is disabled, by default.
• Data on EBS volume is NOT LOST in following scenarios:
o Reboot on the Instance
o Stopping an EBS-backed instance
o Termination of the Instance for the additional EBS volumes. Additional
EBS volumes are detached with their data intact.
• When EBS-backed instance is in a stopped state, various instance and
volume-related tasks can be done. For example, you can modify the
properties of the instance, you can change the size of your instance or
update the kernel it is using, or you can attach your root volume to a
different running instance for debugging or for any other purpose.
• EBS volumes are tied to a single AZ in which they are created.
• EBS volumes are automatically replicated within that zone to prevent
data loss due to failure of any single hardware component.
• AMI creation is easy using a single command.
• EBS backed Instances can be upgraded for instance type, Kernel, RAM
disk and user data.

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4.3. EBS Snapshots

You can back up the data on your Amazon EBS volumes to Amazon S3 by
taking point-in-time snapshots. Snapshots are incremental backups, which
means that only the blocks on the device that have changed after your most
recent snapshot are saved. This minimizes the time required to create the
snapshot and saves the storage costs by not duplicating data. When you delete a
snapshot, only the data unique to that snapshot is removed. Each snapshot
contains all the information needed to restore your data from the moment when
the snapshot was taken to a new EBS volume.
Creating an Amazon EBS Snapshot
A point-in-time snapshot of an EBS volume can be used as a baseline for new
volumes or for data backup. If you make periodic snapshots of a volume, the
snapshots are incremental which means only the blocks on the device that have
changed after your last snapshot are saved in the new snapshot. Even though
snapshots are saved incrementally, the snapshot deletion process is designed so
that you need to retain only the most recent snapshot in order to restore the
entire volume.
To create a snapshot using the console:
1. Open the amazon EC2 console.
2. Click Snapshots in the navigation pane.
3. Click Create Snapshot.
4. On the Create Snapshot page, select the volume to create a snapshot for.
5. Select Add tags t the snapshot. For each tag, provide a tag key and a tag
value (Optional).
6. Click Create Snapshot.

4.4. EBS Encryption

Amazon EBS encryption offers a simple encryption solution for your EBS
volumes without the need to build, maintain, and secure your own key
management infrastructure. When you create an encrypted EBS volume and
attach it to a supported instance type, the following types of data are encrypted:
• Data at rest inside the volume
• All data moving between the volume and the instance
• All snapshots created from the volume
• All volumes created from those snapshots
Encryption operations occur on the servers that host EC2 instances by ensuring
the security of both data-at-rest and data-in-transit between an instance and its
attached EBS storage.

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Encryption is supported by all EBS volume types (General Purpose SSD [gp2],
Provisioned IOPS SSD [io1], Throughput Optimized HDD [st1], Cold HDD [sc1],
and Magnetic [standard]). You can expect the same IOPS performance on
encrypted volumes as on unencrypted volumes with a minimal effect on
latency. You can access encrypted volumes in the same way as you access
unencrypted volumes. Encryption and decryption are handled transparently
and does not require additional action from you or your applications.
Public snapshots of encrypted volumes are not supported, but you can share an
encrypted snapshot with specific accounts.
Amazon EBS encryption is available only on certain instance types. You can
attach both encrypted and unencrypted volumes to a supported instance type.
Encryption Key Management
Amazon EBS encryption uses AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
Customer Master Keys (CMKs) when creating encrypted volumes and any
snapshots created from them. A unique AWS-managed CMK is created for you
automatically in each region where you store AWS assets. This key is used for
Amazon EBS encryption unless you specify a customer-managed CMK that you
created separately using AWS KMS.
Note:
Creating your own CMK gives you more flexibility including the ability to
create, rotate, and disable keys to define access controls.
You cannot change the CMK that is associated with an existing snapshot or
encrypted volume. However, you can associate a different CMK during a
snapshot and copy operation so that the resulting copied snapshot uses the new
CMK.
EBS encrypts your volume with a data key using the industry-standard AES-256
algorithm. Your data key is stored on-disk with your encrypted data, but not
before EBS encrypts it with your CMK and it will never appear there in plain
text. The same data key is shared by snapshots of the volume and any
subsequent volumes created from those snapshots.

4.5. Changing the Encryption State of an EBS Volume

There is no direct way to encrypt an existing unencrypted volume or to remove
encryption from an encrypted volume. However, you can migrate data between
encrypted and unencrypted volumes. You can also apply a new encryption
status while copying a snapshot:
• While copying an unencrypted snapshot of an unencrypted volume, you
can encrypt the copy. Volumes restored from this encrypted copy are also
encrypted.

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• While copying an encrypted snapshot of an encrypted volume, you can

associate the copy with a different CMK. Volumes restored from the
encrypted copy are only accessible using the newly applied CMK.
• You cannot remove encryption from an encrypted snapshot.
Migrate Data between Encrypted and Unencrypted Volumes
When you have access to both an encrypted and unencrypted volume, you can
freely transfer the data between them. EC2 carries out the encryption and
decryption operations transparently.
To migrate data between encrypted and unencrypted volumes:
1. Create your destination volume (encrypted or unencrypted, depending
on your need).
2. Attach the destination volume to the instance that hosts the data to
migrate.
3. Make the destination volume available.
4. Copy the data from your source directory to the destination volume. It
may be most convenient to use a bulk-copy utility for this.

Apply Encryption While Copying a Snapshot

You can apply encryption to a snapshot while copying it. Another path to
encrypting your data is by using the below procedure.
To encrypt a volume's data by means of copying a snapshot:
1. Create a snapshot of your unencrypted EBS volume. This snapshot is also
unencrypted.
2. Copy the snapshot while applying encryption parameters. The resulting
target snapshot is encrypted.
3. Restore the encrypted snapshot to a new volume which is also encrypted.

4.6. Sharing EBS Snapshots

By modifying the permissions of the snapshot, you can share your unencrypted
snapshots with your co-workers or others in the AWS community. Users whom
you have authorized can use your unencrypted shared snapshots as the basis for
creating their own EBS volumes. If you choose, you can also make your
unencrypted snapshots available publicly to all AWS users.
You can share an encrypted snapshot with specific AWS accounts, though you
cannot make it public. For others to use the snapshot, you must also share the
custom CMK key used to encrypt it. Cross-account permissions may be applied
to a custom key either when it is created or at a later time. Users with access can
copy your snapshot and create their own EBS volumes based on your snapshot
while your original snapshot remains unaffected.

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Important:
When you share a snapshot (whether by sharing it with another AWS account or
making it public to all), you are giving others access to all the data on the
snapshot. Share snapshots only with whom you want to share all your snapshot
data.
To modify snapshot permissions using the console:
1. Open the Amazon EC2 console.
2. Click Snapshots in the navigation pane.
3. Select a snapshot and then click Modify Permissions from the Actions list.
4. Select whether to make the snapshot public or to share it with specific
AWS accounts:
• To make the snapshot public, select Public.
This is not a valid option for encrypted snapshots or snapshots with
AWS Marketplace product codes.
• To expose the snapshot to only specific AWS accounts, click Private,
enter the ID of the AWS account (without hyphens) in the AWS
Account Number field, and click Add Permission. Repeat until you
have added all the required AWS accounts.
Points to Remember:
• If your snapshot is encrypted, you must ensure that the following
points are taken care:
o The snapshot is encrypted with a custom CMK but not your
default CMK. If you attempt to change the permissions of a
snapshot encrypted with your default CMK, the console
displays an error message.
o You are sharing the custom CMK with the accounts that have
access to your snapshot.
5. Click Save. Now a user logged into the permitted account can locate the
shared snapshot by choosing Private Snapshots in the filter menu.

4.7. Creating AMIs from EBS-Backed EC2 Instances

An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides the information required to launch
an instance, which is a virtual server in the Cloud. You must specify a source
AMI when you launch an instance. You can launch multiple instances from a
single AMI when you need multiple instances with the same configuration. You
can use different AMIs to launch instances when you need instances with
different configurations.

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An AMI includes:
• A template for the root volume for the instance (for example, an
operating system, an application server, and applications).
• Launch permissions that control which AWS accounts can use the AMI to
launch instances.
• A block device mapping that specifies the volumes to attach to the
instance when it is launched.
Using an AMI
The diagram given below summarizes the AMI lifecycle. After you create and
register an AMI, you can use it to launch new instances. (You can also launch
instances from an AMI if the AMI owner grants you the launch permissions.)
You can copy an AMI within the same region or to different regions. When you
no longer require an AMI, you can deregister it.

Creating Your Own AMI

You can launch an instance from an existing AMI, customize the instance, and
then save this updated configuration as a custom AMI. Instances launched from
this new custom AMI include the customizations that you made when you
created the AMI.
Creating a Linux AMI from an Instance
You can create an AMI using the AWS Management Console or the command
line. The diagram given below summarizes the process for creating an Amazon
EBS-backed AMI from a running EC2 instance. Start with an existing AMI,
launch an instance, customize it, create a new AMI from it, and finally launch an
instance of your new AMI.

To create an AMI from an instance using the console:

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1. Select an appropriate EBS-backed AMI to serve as a starting point for

your new AMI, and configure it as needed before launch.
2. Click Launch to launch an instance of the EBS-backed AMI that you have
selected. Accept the default values as you step through the wizard.
3. While the instance is running, connect to it. You can perform any one of
the following actions on your instance to customize it for your needs:
• Install software and applications.
• Copy data.
• Reduce start time by deleting temporary files, defragmenting your
hard drive, and zeroing out free space.
• Attach additional Amazon EBS volumes.
4. (Optional) Create snapshots of all the volumes attached to your instance
5. In the navigation pane, click Instances, select your instance, and then
click Actions, Image, Create Image.
Tip:
If this option is disabled, your instance is not an Amazon EBS-backed instance.
1. In the Create Image dialog box, specify the following information, and
then click Create Image.
• Image name: A unique name for the image
• Image description: An optional description of the image, up to 255
characters
• No reboot: This option is not selected by default. Amazon EC2 shuts
down the instance, takes snapshots of any attached volumes, creates
and registers the AMI, and then reboots the instance. Select No
reboot to avoid shutting down of your instance.
Warning:
If you select No reboot, there is no guarantee on the file system
integrity of the created image.
• Instance Volumes: The fields in this section enable you to modify the
root volume, and add additional Amazon EBS and instance store
volumes. For information about each field, pause on the icon next to
each field to display field tooltips.
• Some important points are listed below.
o To change the size of the root volume, locate Root in the Volume
Type column, and for Size (GiB), type the required value.
o If you select Delete on Termination, when you terminate the
instance created from this AMI, the EBS volume is deleted. If you
clear Delete on Termination, when you terminate the instance, the
EBS volume is not deleted.

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Note:
Delete on Termination determines if the EBS volume is deleted or
not; it does not affect the instance or the AMI.
o To add an Amazon EBS volume, click Add New Volume (which
adds a new row). For Volume Type, click EBS, and fill in the fields
in the row. When you launch an instance from your new AMI,
additional volumes are automatically attached to the instance.
Empty volumes must be formatted and mounted. Volumes based
on a snapshot must be mounted.
o When you launch an instance from your new AMI, additional
volumes are automatically initialized and mounted. These
volumes do not contain data from the instance store volumes of
the running instance on which you base your AMI.
2. To view the status of your AMI while it is being created, in the navigation
pane, click AMIs. Initially, the status is pending but should change
to available after a few minutes.
3. To view the snapshot that was created for the new AMI, click Snapshots.
When you launch an instance from this AMI, this snapshot is used to
create its root device volume (Optional).
4. Launch an instance from your new AMI.
5. The new running instance contains all the customizations that you
applied in previous steps.

4.8. EBS Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)

With Amazon EBS, you can use any of the standard RAID configurations that
you can use with a traditional bare metal server as long as that particular RAID
configuration is supported by the operating system for your instance. This is
because all RAID is accomplished at the software level. For greater I/O
performance than you can achieve with a single volume, RAID 0 can stripe
multiple volumes together; for on-instance redundancy, RAID 1 can mirror two
volumes together.

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Configuration Use Advantages Disadvantages

RAID 0 When I/O I/O is Performance of the

performance is distributed stripe is limited to the
more important across the worst performing
than fault volumes in a volume in the set. Loss
tolerance; for stripe. If you of a single volume
example, as in a add a volume, results in a complete
heavily used you get the data loss for the array.
database (where straight
data replication addition of
is already set up throughput.
separately).
RAID 1 When fault Safer from the Does not provide a write
tolerance is more standpoint of performance
important than data improvement; requires
I/O performance; durability. more Amazon EC2 to
for example, as Amazon EBS bandwidth
in a critical than non-RAID
application. configurations because
the data is written to
multiple volumes
simultaneously.

Amazon EBS volume data is replicated across multiple servers in an Availability

Zone to prevent the loss of data from the failure of any single component. This
replication makes Amazon EBS volumes ten times more reliable than typical
commodity disk drives.
RAID Configuration Options
The table given below compares the common RAID 0 and RAID 1 options.
Important:
RAID 5 and RAID 6 are not recommended for Amazon EBS because the parity
write operations of these RAID modes consume some of the IOPS available to
your volumes. Depending on the configuration of your RAID array, these RAID
modes provide 20-30% fewer usable IOPS than a RAID 0 configuration.
Increased cost is a factor with these RAID modes as well; when using identical
volume sizes and speeds, a 2-volume RAID 0 array can outperform a 4-volume
RAID 6 array that costs twice as much.

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Creating a RAID 0 array allows you to achieve a higher level of performance for
a file system than you can provision on a single Amazon EBS volume. A RAID 1
array offers a "mirror" of your data for extra redundancy. Before you perform
this procedure, you need to decide how large your RAID array should be and
how many IOPS you want to provision.

4.9. EBS Volumes

Elastic Block Store (EBS) adds to the persistent storage of AWS EC2 using
random access block storage with volumes. EBS provides persistent, high-
performance, and high-availability block-level storage which you can attach to a
running EC2 instance (in the same Availability Zone) in the form of volumes
(1GB - 1TB). Additionally, Amazon allows you to provision a specific level of
I/O performance if desired (called Provisioned IOPS). Each EBS volume can be
formatted and mounted as a file system. You also have direct, random access of
each stored block of data.
Unlike S3, which only provides persistent file storage, EBS provides
persistent block storage. Now you have random access to all the content in a
volume's file system with EBS. You may attach EBS Volumes to instances at run-
time or boot-time. Take EBS Snapshots of a volume at a particular point in time
and then create multiple volumes from a snapshot and place them into any
zone. EBS volumes and snapshots are EC2 region-specific. You cannot use a
volume or snapshot that you created in EC2-US in a different region such as
EC2-EU.
The relationship between an instance and a volume is similar to that of a
computer and a thumb drive. If a thumb drive is improperly removed or a
computer is shutdown improperly, it can result in data corruption or
inconsistent data. You must remember to take frequent snapshots because once
a volume is deleted, it is permanently erased.
• EBS volumes have built-in redundancy.
• User-defined storage size of each EBS Volume is 1GB - 1TB.
• Volumes can only be mounted by one instance at any time.
• Instances can only attach EBS volumes that are in the same Availability
Zone.
• Multiple EBS volumes can be attached to the same instance.
• Create an EBS Snapshot of an EBS Volume at any point in time.
• EBS Snapshots are incrementally saved on S3, but hidden from S3 bucket
and file lists.
• Create multiple EBS volumes from the same EBS Snapshot in any zone.
• EBS volumes and snapshots are EC2-region specific.
• There is a maximum of 500 EBS snapshots per AWS account.

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Summary
• Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes and attach them to
Amazon EC2 instances. Once attached, you can create a file system on top
of these volumes, run a database, or use them in any other way you
would use block storage.
• Amazon EBS volumes are placed in a specific Availability Zone where
they are automatically replicated to protect you from the failure of a
single component.
• EBS volume types offer durable snapshot capabilities and are designed
for 99.999% availability.

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References:
1. http://docs.aws.amazon.com/*
2. https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/*
3. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/*

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