Adding Storage

Adding Storage to an Amazon EC2 Instance

Amazon EC2 Storage Overview

EC2 instances have four main storage options:

AWS EC2 Storage Resource	Root Volume	Data volumes for single instance	Data volumes for multiple Linux instances	Data volumes for multiple Windows instances
Amazon EBS (SSD-backed only)	Yes	Yes	No	No
Instance store	Yes	Yes	No	No
Amazon EFS [Linux]	No	No	Yes	No
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server	No	No	No	Yes

Important An EC2 instance will always have a root volume, and can optionally have one or more data volumes.

Instance Store

Instance store provides non-persistent storage to an instance:

Characteristics:

Temporary block-level storage
Uses HDD or SSD (including NVMe SSDs for higher I/O performance)
Instance store data is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated
Data persists when instance is rebooted
Dedicated to a particular instance

Example Use Cases:

Buffers
Cache
Scratch data

Amazon EBS

Amazon EBS volumes provide network-attached persistent storage to an EC2 instance:

Characteristics:

Persistent block-level storage
Can attach to any instance in the same Availability Zone
Uses HDD or SSD
Can be encrypted
Supports snapshots that are persisted to S3
Data persists independently from the life of the instance

Example Use Cases:

Stand-alone database
General application data storage

Amazon EBS SSD-backed volumes are suited for use cases where the performance focus is on IOPS:

General Purpose SSD (gp2):

Balances price and performance for a wide variety of workloads
Recommended for most workloads
Can be a boot volume

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1):

Highest-performance SSD volume
Good for mission-critical, low-latency, or high-throughput workloads
Critical business applications that require sustained IOPS performance
Large database workloads
Transactional workloads
Can be a boot volume

Amazon EBS-optimized Instances

Certain EC2 instance types can be EBS-optimized:

Benefits:

Provides a dedicated network connection to attached EBS volumes
Increases I/O performance
Additional performance achieved if using an Amazon EC2 Nitro System-based instance type

Usage:

For EBS-optimized instance types, optimization is enabled by default
For other instance types that support it, optimization must be manually enabled

Performance EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated bandwidth to Amazon EBS, with options between 425 Mbps and 14,000 Mbps.

Shared File Systems for EC2 Instances

Amazon EBS

Limitation: Attaches only to one instance

Not suitable for multiple instances needing shared storage

Amazon S3

Option but not ideal: Object store system, not a block store

Changes overwrite entire files, not blocks of characters

Amazon EFS (Linux)

Best option for Linux: Satisfies the requirement for multiple Linux instances

Provides performance and read/write consistency of a network file system

Amazon FSx for Windows

Best option for Windows: Satisfies the requirement for multiple Windows instances

Native Windows file system compatibility

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Amazon EFS provides file system storage for Linux-based workloads:

Key Features:

Fully managed elastic file system
Scales automatically up or down as files are added and removed
Petabytes of capacity
Supports Network File System (NFS) protocols
Mounts the file system to the EC2 instance
Compatible with all Linux-based AMIs for Amazon EC2

Common Use Cases:

Home directories: Storage for organizations with many users accessing common datasets
File system for enterprise applications: Scalable, elastic, available, and durable file store
Application testing and development: Common storage repository for secure, organized code sharing
Database backups: Can be mounted with NFSv4 from database servers
Web serving and content management: Durable, high-throughput file system for content management
Big data analytics: Scale and performance for big data applications
Media workflows: Strong data consistency, high throughput, and shared-file access

Storage Classes:

Standard Class Storage
One Zone Class Storage

Use Case: Data actively accessed requiring highest durability and availability

Can create mount target in each Availability Zone in the AWS Region
Multiple EC2 instances can access from multiple Availability Zones
Higher cost but maximum resilience

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server

Amazon FSx for Windows File Server provides fully managed shared file system storage for Microsoft Windows EC2 instances:

Key Features:

Native Microsoft Windows compatibility
New Technology File System (NTFS)
Uses Native Server Message Block (SMB) protocol version 2.0 to 3.1.1
Distributed File System (DFS) Namespaces and DFS Replication
Integrates with Microsoft Active Directory and supports Windows access control lists (ACLs)
Backed by high-performance SSD storage

Use Cases:

Home directories: File system access for hundreds of thousands of users with file/folder permissions
Lift-and-shift application workloads: Fully managed native Windows file shares with Active Directory integration
Media and entertainment workflows: High throughput and low latencies for Windows workloads
Data analytics: Scalable file systems for data-intensive analytics workloads
Web serving and content management: File system accessible across thousands of instances simultaneously
Software development environments: Shared file storage for in-cloud development workflows

Storage options for EC2 instances include instance store, Amazon EBS, Amazon EFS, and Amazon FSx for Windows File Server. For a root volume, use instance store or SSD-backed Amazon EBS. For a data volume serving only one instance, use instance store or Amazon EBS storage. For data volumes serving multiple Linux instances, use Amazon EFS, and for multiple Microsoft Windows instances, use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.