🚀 Day 2: Deep Dive into Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) – Storage for Your EC2 Instances

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Overview

In Day 2 of my DevOps learning journey, I explored Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) — a durable, high-performance block storage service tightly integrated with EC2. EBS enables persistent storage for virtual machines, application data, and critical workloads in the cloud.

This post covers key concepts, volume types, data protection mechanisms, and hands-on deployment.

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🔹 What is Amazon EBS?

Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes that can be attached to EC2 instances. These volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices, suitable for file systems, databases, or application storage.

Unlike ephemeral instance storage, EBS volumes are persistent — data is retained even after the instance is stopped or terminated (if configured appropriately).

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🔹 Key Advantages of EBS

• Durability: Replicated within the Availability Zone (AZ) for fault tolerance.

• Persistence: Volumes survive instance stops and reboots.

• Scalability: Resize and reconfigure without downtime.

• Performance Tiers: Tailored for diverse workloads.

• Encryption: Integrated with AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for secure data-at-rest and in-transit.

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🔹 EBS Volume Types and Use Cases

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🔹 Data Protection: EBS Encryption

EBS volumes can be encrypted by default using AWS KMS-managed keys (aws/ebs) or customer-managed keys (CMKs).
Benefits include:

• Secure data at rest

• Encrypted snapshots and AMIs

• Transparent decryption for attached instances

Encryption is enforced automatically during:

• Volume creation

• Snapshot creation/restoration

• AMI creation (from encrypted volumes)

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🔹 Root Volumes vs. Data Volumes

• Root Volume: Attached by default when launching an instance; contains the OS.

• Data Volume: Manually attached post-launch; used for persistent application data, logs, and backup storage.

You can modify, snapshot, or migrate these volumes independently.

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🔹 Snapshots and AMIs

➤ EBS Snapshots

• Stored in Amazon S3 (incrementally)

• Can be used to restore a volume or create a new one

• Useful for backups and disaster recovery

➤ Amazon Machine Images (AMI)

• Contains an EC2 instance's configuration, including:

  • Root EBS volume

  • Permissions

  • Launch settings

• Can be shared across accounts or regions

🧠 Difference: Snapshots are volume backups; AMIs are complete bootable machine images.

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🔹 Lifecycle Management

Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM) automates EBS snapshot creation and deletion.

Benefits:

• Policy-driven backup schedules

• Cost optimization by removing outdated snapshots

• Enhanced compliance posture

Example Policy:

• Snapshot /dev/xvdf every 12 hours

• Retain for 7 days

• Apply to tagged volumes (Environment=Production)

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🔹 Lab: EBS in Action (Manual Provisioning)

Scenario:

Attach a secondary volume to an EC2 instance and use it for persistent data.

Steps:

1. Create a 10 GiB gp3 volume in the same AZ as the EC2 instance.

2. Attach volume to /dev/xvdf.

3. Connect via SSH and configure:

lsblk                              # Identify new device
sudo mkfs -t ext4 /dev/xvdf        # Format the volume
sudo mkdir /mnt/data
sudo mount /dev/xvdf /mnt/data     # Mount it

4. (Optional) Add to /etc/fstab for persistence.