Understanding EC2 Instance Storage 📦

#aws #ec2

When launching EC2 instances, it's important to understand different storage options:

🔹 Block Storage vs Object Storage:
👉 Object Storage (S3): Best for large volumes of unstructured data (e.g., images, backups).
👉 Block Storage (EBS, EC2 Instance Store): Best for transactional data and frequently accessed small files.

🔹 File Storage:
👉 EFS (Elastic File System): AWS-managed network file system, scalable across instances.

🔹 Elastic Block Store (EBS) Highlights:
👉 Acts like a network-attached USB drive — uses network communication, so slight latency exists.
👉 Attach/Detach anytime — can be attached or detached from running EC2 instances.
👉 Persistent Data — survives even after the EC2 instance is terminated.
👉 Multiple Volumes: One EC2 instance can have multiple EBS volumes attached.
👉 AZ Bound:
👉 👉 EBS volumes are tied to an Availability Zone (AZ).
👉 👉 You can't attach an EBS created in us-east-1a to an instance in us-east-2a.
👉 👉 Use Snapshots to migrate across AZs.

🔹 Important Behavior:
👉 Root EBS Volume: Created with EC2 by default; has "Delete on Termination" = true (can be disabled).
👉 Additional EBS Volumes: Created manually; default "Delete on Termination" = false.
👉 Billing: Charged for provisioned storage (GBs, IOPS).

📚 If you're preparing for AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, feel free to use my notes here Notes

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