EBS Volume Types

• Solid state drives (SSD) (gp2 and io1 and io2):

  • For transactional workloads involving frequent read/write operations with small I/O size.

  • Dominant performance attribute is IOPS.

• Hard disk drives (HDD) (st1 and sc1):

  • For large streaming workloads.

  • Dominant performance attribute is throughput.

  • Can't be used for boot volumes.

EBS Volume Types

• Provides the following volume types:

  • General Purpose SSD (gp2)

    • Cost-effective storage that is ideal for a broad range of workloads.

    • Deliver single-digit millisecond latencies.

    • Ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS for extended periods of time.

    • Max IOPS per volume = 16,000.

    • Use cases:

      • Boot volumes.

      • Low-latency interactive apps.

      • Development and test environments.

  • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 and io2)

    • Designed to meet the needs of I/O-intensive workloads, particularly database workloads, that are sensitive to storage performance and consistency.

    • Uses a consistent IOPS rate, which you specify when you create the volume.

    • Multi-Attach enables you to attach a single volume to up to 16 Nitro-based instances that are in the same Availability Zone; this is only for io1.

    • Use cases:

      • Workloads that require sustained IOPS performance or more than 16,000 IOPS or 250 MiB/s of throughput per volume.

      • I/O-intensive database workloads.

      • Small volume sizes with high IO requirements.

  • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)

    • Low-cost.

    • For frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads.

    • Use cases:

      • Big data.

      • Data warehouses.

      • Log processing.

  • Cold HDD (sc1)

    • Lowest-cost.

    • sc1 = Cold Data = Infrequently Accessed.

    • For infrequently accessed workloads.

    • Use cases:

      • Throughput-oriented storage for data that is infrequently accessed.

      • Scenarios where the lowest storage cost is important.