Storage

EBS Volume #

EBS (Elastic Block Store) - Network drive that can be attached to instances while they run
It allows instances to persist the data, even after their termination
Can be mounted to 1 instance at a time
Bound to an Availability Zone
It’s a “Network Drive”
- it uses the network to communicate to the instance (there can be latency)
- it can be detached from an EC2 instance and attached to another one quickly
It’s locked to an Availability Zone (AZ)
- an EBS Volume that is us-east-1a can’t be attached to us-east-1b
- to move a volume across AZ, snapshot has to be created first
It has a provisioned capacity (size in GB and IOPS)
- you will get billed for a provisioned capacity
- You can increase the capacity of the drive

EBS Volumes can be attached to only 1 EC2 instance at a time but EC2 instances can have multiple EBS Volumes attached to them¹

EBS Delete on Termination #

Controls the EBS behavior when EC2 instance terminates
- by default the root EBS volume is deleted (attribute enabled)
- by default any other attached EBS volume is not deleted (attribute disabled)
This can be controlled by both, AWS Console and AWS CLI
Use case: preserve root volume when instance is terminated

EBS Snapshots #

Make a backup (snapshot) of EBS volume at a point in time
Not necessary to detach the volume to do the snapshot but recommended
Snapshots can be copied across AZ or Regions

EBS Snapshots features #

EBS Snapshot Archive
- Move a Snapshot to an “archive tier” that is 75% cheaper
- Takes between 24 to 72 hours of restoring the archive

EC2 > Snapshots > Recycle Bin > Create retention rule

When Snapshot Archive is enabled, it is possible to Archive it from a drop-down box in AWS Console. Archived Snapshots appear in the Recycle Bin.

Recycle Bin for EBS Snapshots
- Setup rules to retain deleted snapshots so you can recover them after an accidental deletion
- Specify retention (from 1 day to 1 year)

🙋🏻 Question: Does EBS Recycle Bin protect EBS Volumes or only EBS Snapshots?

If volume‑level protection is required, the correct approach is:

Take snapshots (manual, scheduled, or via AWS Backup)
Apply Recycle Bin retention rules to those snapshots

Practical takeaway

If you delete an EBS volume, it’s gone unless you have a snapshot. If you delete a snapshot and Recycle Bin is enabled, you can recover it.

🙋🏻 Question: EBS Restore in another region - what needs to be considered when using KMS CMK?

To restore an encrypted EBS snapshot in another region, AWS must re‑encrypt it using a KMS key in the destination region. Multi‑Region keys (MRK) simplify this because replicas exist in each region. Single‑Region keys require a separate CMK in the target region and appropriate key‑sharing permissions.

🙋🏻 Question: How does KMS CMK key rotation affect EBS snapshots stored in the Recycle Bin, and what considerations are required to ensure those snapshots remain recoverable?

EBS Recycle Bin keeps snapshots, but KMS CMK key rotation does not re‑encrypt them. As long as the original CMK remains enabled and not deleted, snapshots are fully recoverable. If the CMK is disabled or deleted, Recycle Bin cannot save the snapshot.

Automatic annual rotation of AWS‑managed or customer‑managed CMKs is fully compatible with Recycle Bin.
Manual deletion of the CMK breaks your ability to restore snapshots.

Fast Snapshot Restore (FSR)
- Force full initialization of snapshot to have no latency on the first use (EXPENSIVE!)

EC2 Instance Store #

EBS volumes are network drives with good but “limited” performance
If high-performance hardware disk is required, EC2 Instance Store can be used
Better I/O performance
EC2 Instance Store is ephemeral (data is lost after stopping EC2 instance)
Use case: buffer, cache, scratch data, temporary content

Risk of data loss if hardware fails.

EFS - Elastic File System #

Managed NFS (Network File System) that can be mounted on 100s of EC2 instances
EFS works with Linux EC2 instances only and is multi-AZ.
Highly-available, scalable, expensive (3x gp2 EBS), pay per use, no capacity planning
Encryption at rest using KMS
Scales automatically, pay-per-use, no capacity planning

Performance & Storage Classes #

EFS Scale #

Supports thousands of concurrent NFS clients and 10+ GB/s of throughput
Automatically grows to petabyte‑scale as your data increases

Performance Modes (chosen at file system creation) #

General Purpose (default) - best for latency‑sensitive workloads (web servers, CMS, etc.)
Max I/O - higher latency but higher throughput and massive parallelism (big data, media processing)

Throughput Modes #

Bursting - baseline of 50 MiB/s per TB, with bursts up to 100 MiB/s
Provisioned - set a fixed throughput regardless of storage size (e.g., 1 GiB/s even with 1 TB stored)
Elastic (Recommended) - automatically adjusts throughput based on workload demand
- Up to 3 GiB/s reads and 1 GiB/s writes
- Ideal for unpredictable or spiky workloads

Storage Classes #

EFS Storage tiers and lifecycle management.

Standard #

For frequently accessed files

EFS Infrequent Access (EFS-IA) #

Storage class that is cost-optimized for files not accessed every day
up to 92% lower cost compared to EFS Standard
When enabled, EFS will automatically move your files to EFS-IA based on last time they were accessed
Enable EFS-IA with a Lifecycle Policy
- Example: move files that are not accessed for 60 days to EFS-IA
Transparent to the applications accessing EFS (apps don’t see whether file is in EFS or EFS-IA)

Archive #

Rarely accessed data (few times each year), 50% cheaper

Availability and durability #

Standard: Multi-AZ, great for prod
One Zone: One AZ, great for dev, backup enabled by default, compatible with IA (EFS One Zone-IA)

EBS vs EFS #

Feature	EBS	EFS
Access Model	Single-instance	Multi-instance
Use Cases	Databases, Development	Web serving, big data
Performance	Low-latency, high IOPS	High throughput
Scalability	Limited to provisioned volume	Auto-scales to petabytes
File Size Limit	No limit	47.9 TiB
Accessibility	Not accessible over the internet	Shared across instances
Pricing	Cheaper for single-instance	Cost-effective for shared use

More info:

Amazon FSx #

3rd party with high-performance file system on AWS.

FSx for Lustre - fully managed, high-performance, scalable file storage for High Performance Computing (HPC).
- Use cases: Machine Learning, Analytics, Video processing, Financial Modelling
- Scales up to 100s GB/s, millions of IOPS, sub-ms latencies
- Seamless integration with S3
  - Can “read S3” as a file system (through FSx)
  - Can write the output of the computations back to S3 (through FSx)
- Can be used from on-premises servers (VPN or Direct Connect)
FSx for Windows File Server - fully managed, highly reliable and scalable Windows native shared file system built on Windows File Server. Supports SMB and NTFS file systems. Integrated with AD for security. Can be accessed from AWS or from On-Premise.
- Microsoft Active Directory integration, ACLs, user quotas
- Can be mounted on Linux EC2 instances
- Supports Microsoft’s Distributed File System (DFS) Namespaces (group files across multiple FS)
FSx for NetApp ONTAP - Managed NetApp ONTAP on AWS. File System compatible with NFS, SMB, iSCSI protocol
- Move workloads running on ONTAP or NAS to AWS
- Works with:
  - Linux
  - Windows
  - MacOS
  - VMware Cloud on AWS
  - Amazon Workspaces & AppStream 2.0
  - Amazon EC2, ECS and EKS
- Storage shrinks or grows automatically
- Snapshots, replication, low-cost, compression and data de-duplication
- Point-in-time restores
FSx for OpenZFS
- Fully managed OpenZFS file system on AWS
- Supports NFS v3, v4, v4.1, and v4.2
- Ideal for migrating existing ZFS workloads to AWS
- Works with Linux, Windows, macOS, VMware Cloud on AWS, WorkSpaces, AppStream 2.0, EC2, ECS, and EKS
- Delivers up to 1,000,000 IOPS with <0.5 ms latency
- Provides snapshots, compression, and low‑cost storage
- Supports instant, point‑in‑time restores

Hybrid Cloud for Storage #

AWS promotes hybrid cloud architectures
Part of your environment runs in AWS, part remains on‑premises
Common reasons: long migration timelines, security or compliance needs, or broader IT strategy
Since S3 is a proprietary storage system (unlike NFS/EFS), exposing S3 data on‑premises requires a bridge
- Solution: AWS Storage Gateway

Storage Comparison #

S3: Object Storage
S3 Glacier: Object Archival
EBS volumes: Network storage for one EC2 instance at a time
Instance Storage: Physical storage for your EC2 instance (high IOPS)
EFS: Network File System for Linux instances, POSIX filesystem
FSx for Windows: Network File System for Windows servers
FSx for Lustre: High Performance Computing Linux file system
FSx for NetApp ONTAP: High OS Compatibility
FSx for OpenZFS: Managed ZFS file system
Storage Gateway: S3 & FSx File Gateway, Volume Gateway (cache & stored), Tape Gateway
Transfer Family: FTP, FTPS, SFTP interface on top of Amazon S3 or Amazon EFS
DataSync: Schedule data sync from on-premises to AWS, or AWS to AWS
Snowcone / Snowball / Snowmobile: to move large amount of data to the cloud, physically
Database: for specific workloads, usually with indexing and querying

Summary #

EBS Volumes

network drives attached to one EC2 instance at a time
Mapped to an Availability Zones
Can use EBS snapshots for backups and then transferring across AZ’s

EC2 Instance Store

high performance hardware disk attached to our EC2 instance
ephemeral (data lost if instance stopped or terminated)

EFS

Network File System
Can be attached to 100s of EC2 instances
spans through a region
expensive compared to EBS

EFS-IA

Cost-optimized storage class for infrequently accessed files
Lifecycle Policy for automatically moving files between tiers

FSx for Windows

Network File System for Windows servers
SMB and NTFS
Can be accessed from on-prem and the cloud

FSx for Lustre

High Performance (HPC) Linux file system

» Sources « #

» References « #

» Disclaimer « #

This series draws heavily from Stephane Maarek’s Ultimate AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner course on Udemy.

His content was instrumental in helping me pass the certification.

About the instructor
🌐 Website	📺 YouTube
💼 LinkedIn	𝕏 x.com

ℹ️Shared for educational purposes only, no rights reserved.

AWS Certification Series »
AWS Cloud Practitioner	AWS Solution Architect

Only true at Practitioner level. More info: EBS Multi‑Attach. ↩︎