Amazon EC2 Instance Storage

Instance Store Volumes

• The volumes physically reside on the same host as the EC2 instance itself
• Ephemeral storage for EC2 instances
• Not recommended for critical or valuable data
• If your instance is stopped or terminated your data is lost
• If your instance is rebooted, your data will remain in tact

Benefits

• No additional cost for storage, it’s included in the price of the instance
• Offer a very high I/O speed
• I3 instance Family:
  • 3.3 million random read IOPS
  • 1.4 million write IOPS
  • Speeds like this makes this an ideal candidate for high-demand NoSQL databases
  • But for persistence will have to copied/replicated to a persistent store
• Great for cache or buffer for rapidly changing data without the need for retention

• Often used within a load balancing group, where data is replicated and pooled between the fleet

• Instance store volumes are not available for all instances
• The capacity of instance store volumes increases with the size of the EC2 instance
• Instance store volumes have the same security mechanisms provided by EC2

Anti-patterns

• Instance store volumes should not be used for:
  • Data that needs to remain persistent
  • Data that needs to be accessed and shared by multiple entities

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