Discuss EBS volume types.

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Choosing the right EBS volume type is one of the most important cost and performance decisions in AWS architecture. SSD-based volumes are optimized for small, random I/O operations (databases, boot volumes), while HDD-based volumes are optimized for large, sequential I/O operations (big data, log processing). Only SSD types (gp2, gp3, io1, io2) can be used as boot/root volumes. Full Name: General Purpose SSD v2 Size: 1 GiB – 16 TiB Baseline IOPS: 3 IOPS per GiB (minimum 100, maximum 16,000 IOPS) Throughput: Up to 250 MiB/s Burst: Volumes under 1 TiB can burst to 3,000 IOPS using burst credits Use Cases: Boot volumes, small-to-medium databases, development environments Note: gp3 is newer, cheaper, and better — AWS recommends migrating from gp2 to gp3 Full Name: General Purpose SSD v3 Size: 1 GiB – 16 TiB Baseline IOPS: 3,000 IOPS included at no extra cost (regardless of volume size) Maximum IOPS: Up to 16,000 IOPS (provisioned independently of size) Throughput: 125 MiB/s baseline, up to 1,000 MiB/s (provisioned independently) Cost: 20% cheaper per GiB than gp2 Use Cases: Boot volumes, virtual desktops, medium databases, dev/test environments Key Advantage: IOPS and throughput are configurable independently of storage size — unlike gp2 Full Name: Provisioned IOPS SSD v1 Size: 4 GiB – 16 TiB Maximum IOPS: Up to 64,000 IOPS (on Nitro-based instances) Maximum Throughput: 1,000 MiB/s IOPS-to-GiB Ratio: Maximum 50:1 (e.g., 16,000 IOPS requires at least 320 GiB) Multi-Attach: Supported — attach to up to 16 Nitro-based instances simultaneously Use Cases: I/O-intensive databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MongoDB), latency-sensitive production workloads Note: io2 is the newer, more durable successor to io1 Full Name: Provisioned IOPS SSD v2 Size: 4 GiB – 64 TiB (io2 Block Express) Maximum IOPS: 64,000 IOPS (io2), up to 256,000 IOPS (io2 Block Express) Maximum Throughput: 4,000 MiB/s (io2 Block Express) Durability: 99.999% (five nines) vs 99.8–99.9% for io1 and gp-series IOPS-to-GiB Ratio: Maximum 500:1 (10x better than io1) Multi-Attach: Supported Use Cases: Mission-critical databases, SAP HANA, large-scale Oracle/SQL Server, financial systems Note: io2 Block Express is the highest-performance EBS volume available Full Name: Throughput Optimized HDD Size: 125 GiB – 16 TiB Maximum Throughput: 500 MiB/s Maximum IOPS: 500 IOPS (not suitable for random I/O) Cost: Much cheaper per GiB than SSD volumes Cannot be used as a boot volume Use Cases: Big data (Hadoop, Spark), data warehouses, log processing, ETL pipelines, streaming workloads with large sequential reads Full Name: Cold HDD Size: 125 GiB – 16 TiB Maximum Throughput: 250 MiB/s Maximum IOPS: 250 IOPS Cost: The lowest-cost EBS volume type Cannot be used as a boot volume Use Cases: Infrequently accessed cold data, archival storage, backups, disaster recovery data that rarely needs to be read // EBS Volume Types Summary
// +-----------+--------+-----------+------------------+------------------+-------------+
// | Type      | Media  | Max IOPS  | Max Throughput   | Max Size         | Boot Vol?   |
// +-----------+--------+-----------+------------------+------------------+-------------+
// | gp2       | SSD    | 16,000    | 250 MiB/s        | 16 TiB           | YES         |
// | gp3       | SSD    | 16,000    | 1,000 MiB/s      | 16 TiB           | YES         |
// | io1       | SSD    | 64,000    | 1,000 MiB/s      | 16 TiB           | YES         |
// | io2       | SSD    | 64,000    | 1,000 MiB/s      | 16 TiB           | YES         |
// | io2 BX    | SSD    | 256,000   | 4,000 MiB/s      | 64 TiB           | YES         |
// | st1       | HDD    | 500       | 500 MiB/s        | 16 TiB           | NO          |
// | sc1       | HDD    | 250       | 250 MiB/s        | 16 TiB           | NO          |
// +-----------+--------+-----------+------------------+------------------+-------------+

// Create a gp3 volume with custom IOPS and throughput
aws ec2 create-volume \
  --volume-type gp3 \
  --size 500 \
  --iops 6000 \
  --throughput 400 \
  --availability-zone us-east-1a

// Create an io2 provisioned IOPS volume
aws ec2 create-volume \
  --volume-type io2 \
  --size 1000 \
  --iops 50000 \
  --availability-zone us-east-1a

Discuss EBS volume types.

Amazon EBS offers six volume types divided into two main categories: SSD-backed volumes (gp2, gp3, io1, io2) for transactional workloads requiring high IOPS, and HDD-backed volumes (st1, sc1) for sequential, throughput-intensive workloads. Each type differs in performance, cost, and use case.

Discuss EBS volume types.

Amazon EBS offers six volume types divided into two main categories: SSD-backed volumes (gp2, gp3, io1, io2) for transactional workloads requiring high IOPS, and HDD-backed volumes (st1, sc1) for sequential, throughput-intensive workloads. Each type differs in performance, cost, and use case.

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