AWS Storage Types | Overview & Hands-On.

An Overview & Hands-On for AWS Storage Types.

Focus:

• Tailored for SRE, DevOps, Cloud, and DevSecOps Engineers

Breakdown:

• Intro,
• Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS),
• Instance Store,
• Amazon Elastic File System (EFS),
• EC2 instance storage types and use-cases,
• Things to keep in mind,
• Insights,
• How to configures & terminate EC2 instance but retains the EBS root volume with its data still intact,
• Project: Hands-On.

Intro:

• AWS offers several storage types for EC2 instances.
• AWS storage types are categorized primarily into block storage, ephemeral local storage, and shared file storage options that can attach to instances. 

The main storage types for EC2 instances are:

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

•  EBS provides durable, persistent block-level storage volumes that can be attached to a running EC2 instance. 
• The data on an EBS volume persists independently from the life of the instance, even after the instance is stopped or terminated. 
• EBS volumes are highly available and support snapshots and backups, making them suitable for primary storage for databases, enterprise applications, and the root volumes of most instances.
• EBS offers various volume types, including General Purpose SSD (gp3/gp2), Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2/io1), Throughput Optimized HDD (st1), and Cold HDD (sc1), each optimized for specific performance and cost requirements.

Instance Store

•  Instance store provides temporary block storage that is physically located on the host server to which the EC2 instance is attached. 
• This storage delivers very high random I/O performance and low latency, as it is local to the host. 
• However, the data stored on an instance store volume is ephemeral; it is lost if the instance stops, terminates, or if the underlying host hardware fails.
• It is ideal for use cases like temporary cache, scratch data, buffer layers, or any data that can be easily regenerated.

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

•  EFS provides a scalable, fully managed network file system that can be shared across multiple EC2 instanc66. 
• It is suitable for scenarios where multiple instances need concurrent access to the same data, such as content management systems, web serving, and shared development environments. 
• While not physically "attached" to a single instance in the same way as EBS or instance store, it is a primary storage option used with EC2. 

In summary, 

• The key difference lies in durability and performance: 
• use EBS for persistent, critical data, instance store for high-performance temporary data. 
• Use EFS for data that needs to be shared across instances.

EC2 instance storage types and use-cases.

1. Instance Store (ephemeral storage)

• Temporary, local storage physically attached to the EC2 host.
• Data is lost if the instance stops or is terminated.
• Use case: Temporary storage needs like caching or scratch data.

 2. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

• Durable, persistent storage that attaches to EC2 instances.
• Can store OS, databases, or application data.
• Data remains even after stopping or terminating the instance (if not deleted).
• Use case: Boot volumes, databases, critical app storage.

 3. Amazon EFS/NFS (Elastic File System/Network file system)

• Shared file system that can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances.
• Scales automatically as files grow.
• Use case: Shared access for web servers, CMS, or analytics pipelines.

Things to keep in mind

•  Know the difference between temporary (Instance Store) and persistent (EBS/EFS) storage.
• Know when to use block storage (EBS) vs. file storage (EFS).
• Recognize that Instance Store is not durable and is not used for critical data.
• know that EBS volumes are bound to a specific availability zone.
• twtech EBS Volume in us-east-2a cannot be attached to us-east-1b.
• Thererfore, twtech considers an ebs volume as a “network USB stick”.
• twtech can have Free tier for up to 30 GB of free EBS storage of type General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic per month.
• EBS is a network drive (it is not a physical drive).
• The ebs volume uses the network to communicate between instances, and that accounts for the reasons behind latency.
• twtech may detached its ebs volume from an EC2 instance and attached to another in the same AZ.
• twtech uses snapshots to move a volume across.
• The ebs volume has a provisioned capacity of size in GBs, or IOPS.

A. GBs (Gigabytes per second)

• Meaning:A measure of data trangfer speed—how fast data can be read from or written to a storage device.
• Example: If a drive has a speed of 2 GB/s, it can transfer 2 gigabytes of data every second.
• Use case: Important for tasks like copying large files, streaming high-resolution video, or loading big databases quickly.

B. IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second)

• Meaning: A measure of how many individual read/write operations a storage system can handle per second.
• Example: A drive with 10,000 IOPS can process 10,000 read or write commands each second.
• Use case: Crucial for workloads with lots of small, random reads/writes, like databases or high-traffic web servers.

NB:

•  twtech is billed for its provisioned ebs volumes.
•  twtech may decide to increase ( Scale up/out)  or decrease (Scale down/in)  the capacity of the drive over time
• twtech may apply vertically Scaling (same volume) or horizontally Scaling (different  volumes). 

NB:

• Instance Volume can be manage under Advance-Settings.
• By default, Instance storage is deletes on termination of EC2 instance. 

NB

• Other volumes created (custom volumes) and attached to an instance is not deleted on termination of instance (No).
• Custom volumes must be manually released via AWS console and  CLI.

Insights:

 1. Instance Store (Ephemeral Storage)

Key Traits:

• Physically attached to the host computer.
• High IOPS, low latency.
• Data is lost when the instance stops, hibernates, or terminates.
• Cannot be detached or moved between instances.

 Use Cases:

• Temporary data like cache, buffers, scratch data, or temporary logs.
• Applications with high-speed, short-term storage needs (e.g., video processing, batch jobs).
• High-performance NoSQL databases where persistence is handled elsewhere.

2.    Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)

Key Traits:

• Network-attached, persistent block storage.
• Survives instance stop/start/termination (if not explicitly deleted).
• Can be snapshotted, resized, and attached/detached from instances.
• Supports encryption and backup.

Types of EBS volumes:

Type	Key Feature	Use Case
gp3 / gp2	General Purpose SSD	Boot volumes, dev/test workloads
io2 / io1	Provisioned IOPS SSD	Databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle
st1	Throughput Optimized HDD	Big data, data warehouses, log processing
sc1	Cold HDD	Infrequently accessed, low-cost storage

Use Cases:

• Boot volumes, application storage.
• Databases, transactional systems, persistent volumes.
• Systems that need durability and reliability.

 3. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) – Not EC2-specific, but often used with EC2

Key Traits:

• Fully managed, elastic NFS file system.
• Accessible by multiple EC2 instances across AZs.
• Scales automatically.

Use Cases:

• Shared file storage across EC2 instances.
• CMS systems, web servers, data science pipelines.
• Applications needing a common file system.

4. Amazon FSx – File storage optimized for specific workloads (e.g., FSx for Windows, Lustre)

Storage Type	Persistent	Performance	Use Cases
Instance Store	❌ No	Very high	Cache, temp files, scratch data
EBS (gp3/io1/st1)	✅ Yes	Medium to high	Boot, databases, general workloads
EFS	✅ Yes	Shared, scalable	Shared file systems, multi-AZ access
FSx	✅ Yes	Specialized	Windows apps, HPC, Lustre file systems

• How twtech configures and terminate its EC2 instance but retains the EBS root volume with its data still intact.

Step-by-Step in the AWS Console:

1. Go to the EC2 Dashboard.
2. Select the instance you want to terminate.
3. Click the "Actions" dropdown, then go to:
• Instance settings → Change Termination Protection → Make sure it's disabled (select: NO).
4. Now go to:
• Actions → Instance settings → Change root volume delete behavior.
5. Uncheck the box “Delete on termination” for the root volume (usually /dev/xvda or /dev/sda1).
• Or go to Volumes, find the root volume attached to the instance, and:
• Select it → Actions → Modify Volume Attachment → Uncheck "Delete on termination".
6. Click Save.
7. Now terminate the instance:
• Actions → Instance State → Terminate instance.

Notes:

• After termination, the root EBS volume will remain in twtech account, and twtech can later:
• Attach it to another EC2 instance.
• Create a snapshot or AMI from it.
• Mount it as a secondary volume to inspect or recover data.

 CLI Equivalent:

twtech can also use the AWS CLI Configure Termination Protection:

#   bash

aws ec2 modify-instance-attribute \

    --instance-id i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx \

    --block-device-mappings "[{\"DeviceName\":\"/dev/xvda\",\"Ebs\":{\"DeleteOnTermination\":false}}]"

# Then terminate the instance:

#  bash 

aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids i-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Project: Hands-On

How twtech creates an ebs volume and attach it to an instance.

Step-1:

Go EC2 console and navigate to elastic block store, then: volumes

• us-east-2 is selected because it  corresponds to zone where the instance is located. ( same AZ)

• Add tags

• Create volume:

Step-2:

• Attach volume to instance in the same AZ. Make sure the state is:  available.

• Select the instance and device name to attach volume to:

Step-3:

Verify that the volume has been attached to the instance:

Successfully, twtech-web-server storage has been horizontally scaled (another volume added)

Step-4:

• How twtech detaches and delete unwanted ebs volumes that is attached to an instance:
• First: Detach volume from instance

• Confirm to detach:

Step-5:

• Next. Delete the detached volume: refresh the page if need be.

• Confirm and detete volume:

Step-5:

• If twtech terminates an instance, the root volume is destroyed because by default delete on termination is set: YES.
• This can also be set to, (if need be) to : No (root-volume will not be deleted on termination of instance)

• But the default ebs volume remains available.
• Verify that the instance (twtech-webserver) has only the root volume still attached:
• Yes,