# Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

* Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) **provides block level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances**.<br>

* EBS volumes **behave like raw, unformatted block devices**.<br>

* You **can mount these volumes as devices on your instances**.<br>

* EBS volumes that are attached to an instance are exposed as storage volumes that **persist independently from the life of the instance**.<br>

* You **can create a file system on top of these volumes, or use them in any way you would use a block device (such as a hard drive)**.<br>

* AWS recommend Amazon EBS **for data that must be quickly accessible and requires long-term persistence**.<br>

* **EBS volumes are particularly well-suited for use as the primary storage for file systems, databases, or for any applications that require fine granular updates and access to raw, unformatted, block-level storage**.<br>

* **To make a volume available outside of the Availability Zone, you can create a snapshot and restore that snapshot to a new volume anywhere in that Region**.<br>

* **EBS Volumes - Availability Zone**

  * Amazon **EBS volume is tied to its Availability Zone.**
  * **It can only be attached to instances in the same Availability Zone**.

* **EBS Snapshot - Regional**
  * An **EBS snapshot is tied to its region.**
  * **It can only be used to create volumes in the same region** and has to be copied from one region to another if needed.

## Pricing

* AWS **Free Tier includes 30GB of Storage**, **2 million I/Os**, and **1GB of snapshot storage** with Amazon EBS.<br>
* With Amazon EBS, you **pay for what you provisioned; it doesn't matter if you used it or not**.

![](https://4079160698-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MOmHH1M7R1RV5MGm4F7%2F-MOrOdA9aqAiknIzhYR9%2F-MOrSk_4DACN-ru6YW4W%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=12f99488-cda7-4040-9f86-52e75ebbf115)


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