1. EBS Volume Types at a High Level
EBS volumes are like virtual hard drives for EC2. AWS gives you several types, optimized for different needs:
- SSD-based → Good for transactional workloads (frequent reads/writes, like databases).
- HDD-based → Good for throughput workloads (large sequential reads/writes, like big data).
2. SSD Types
🔹 General Purpose SSD (gp3)
- Default option for most EC2 setups.
- Balances performance & cost.
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Performance:
- Up to 16,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).
- Up to 1,000 MB/s throughput.
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Good for:
- Boot volumes, dev/test environments, small to medium databases, general workloads.
👉 Limitation: You can’t go past 16,000 IOPS, so not ideal for very high-performance databases.
🔹 Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2)
- High-performance option for critical workloads.
- You provision (set) exactly how many IOPS you want.
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Performance:
- 20,000+ IOPS (io2 can go up to 256,000 IOPS with certain instance types).
- High durability (io2 has 99.999% durability).
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Good for:
- Large, high-performance databases (e.g., Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL).
- Applications that require consistent low-latency performance.
👉 Think of this as the “premium SSD” for mission-critical apps.
3. HDD Types
HDDs are cheaper but not good for small, random reads/writes. They shine in sequential throughput workloads.
🔹 Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)
- Designed for big, streaming workloads.
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Performance:
- Up to 500 MB/s throughput.
- Not measured in IOPS (not good for random small reads/writes).
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Good for:
- Big data, data warehouses, log processing.
🔹 Cold HDD (sc1)
- Lowest-cost option for infrequently accessed data.
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Performance:
- Up to 250 MB/s throughput.
- Best for cold storage (data you rarely need).
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Good for:
- Archiving, backups, rarely accessed large files.
An application uses a MySQL database running on an Amazon EC2 instance. The application generates high I/O and constant writes to a single table on the database. Which Amazon EBS volume type will provide the MOST consistent performance and low latency?
MySQL database → transaction-heavy workload.
High I/O and constant writes → needs high IOPS.
Single table being hammered → requires consistent low-latency performance.
Which EBS volume type fits?
gp3 (General Purpose SSD)
Good balance, but max 16,000 IOPS.
Latency and performance can fluctuate under heavy, sustained writes.
Not the best for mission-critical, high I/O databases.
st1 / sc1 (HDD types)
Optimized for throughput, not IOPS.
Bad for databases that need random, small, frequent reads/writes.
Definitely not suitable here.
io1 / io2 (Provisioned IOPS SSD) ✅
You can provision the exact IOPS you need (e.g., 20,000+).
Designed for consistent performance with low latency.
Specifically recommended for large, I/O-intensive databases like MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server.
io2 is even more durable and cost-effective than io1.
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