Day 45 - Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) Deep Dive

Today I explored Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) — the foundational storage layer for EC2 instances. EBS volumes are durable, high-performance block storage devices that you can attach to EC2. They store everything from the OS and application data to database files.

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💽 What is Amazon EBS?

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a block-level storage service for use with EC2. Think of it like a virtual hard drive that persists independently of the EC2 instance lifecycle.

🔧 Key Features:

• Block-based storage (vs. object storage like S3)

• Used to run OS, store app data, DB files, and more

• Located in a specific Availability Zone (AZ)

• Automatically replicated within the AZ to protect from hardware failure

• Snapshots can be used to back up and restore volumes

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📦 EBS Volume Types

Amazon EBS provides multiple volume types optimized for different use cases:

1. General Purpose SSD (gp3/gp2)

• Most common, balanced performance

• Ideal for boot volumes, small to medium workloads

2. Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2/io1)

• High-performance SSD for critical databases

• Offers dedicated IOPS (input/output operations per second)

3. Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)

• Used for big data, data warehouses, log processing

4. Cold HDD (sc1)

• Lowest-cost storage

• Ideal for infrequently accessed data like backups

5. Magnetic (Standard) (legacy)

• Older generation — suitable for archives and cold data

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🔁 EBS Snapshots — Backup and Restore

Snapshots are point-in-time backups of your EBS volumes. You can create snapshots manually or via scheduled backups.

🔄 Snapshot Workflow:

1. Unmount the partition (optional but safer)

2. Detach the volume from the instance

3. Create a snapshot from that volume

4. Create a new volume from the snapshot

5. Attach the new volume to the instance

6. Mount it back and resume operations

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📌 Snapshot Use Cases

• 🔄 Backup & Restore of EC2 volumes

• 📏 Resize volumes (increase size without data loss)

• 🔄 Change volume type (e.g., from gp2 to io1)

• 🌐 Copy volumes across AZs or Regions

• 👥 Share snapshots across AWS accounts (via permissions)

📚 Tip: Snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 (behind the scenes) but are block-level, incremental, and optimized for fast restore.

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🧠 What I Learned Today

• EBS is persistent block storage for EC2

• Multiple volume types support performance and budget tradeoffs

• Snapshots are a powerful way to backup, scale, or migrate data

• Volume + snapshot workflows are essential for disaster recovery and infrastructure flexibility

Next: I’ll explore Amazon ELB

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