On a given volume configuration, certain I/O characteristics drive the performance behavior for your EBS volumes. SSD-backed volumes, such as General Purpose SSD (gp2) and Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1,io2), deliver consistent performance whether an I/O operation is random or sequential. HDD-backed volumes like Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) and Cold HDD (sc1) deliver optimal performance only when I/O operations are large and sequential.
In the exam, always consider the difference between SSD and HDD as shown on the table below. This will allow you to easily eliminate specific EBS-types in the options which are not SSD or not HDD, depending on whether the question asks for a storage type which has small, random I/O operations or large, sequential I/O operations.
Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1,io2) volumes are designed to meet the needs of I/O-intensive workloads, particularly database workloads, that are sensitive to storage performance and consistency. Unlike gp2, which uses a bucket and credit model to calculate performance, an io1 volume allows you to specify a consistent IOPS rate when you create the volume, and Amazon EBS delivers within 10 percent of the provisioned IOPS performance 99.9 percent of the time over a given year. Provisioned IOPS SSD io2 is an upgrade of Provisioned IOPS SSD io1. It offers higher 99.999% durability and higher IOPS per GiB ratio with 500 IOPS per GiB, all at the same cost as io1 volumes.
Volume Name | General Purpose SSD | Provisioned IOPS SSD | ||
Volume type | gp3 | gp2 | io2 | io1 |
Description | General Purpose SSD volume that balances price performance for a wide variety of transactional workloads | General Purpose SSD volume that balances price performance for a wide variety of transactional workloads | High performance SSD volume designed for business-critical latency-sensitive applications | High performance SSD volume designed for latency-sensitive transactional workloads |
Use Cases | virtual desktops, medium sized single instance databases such as MSFT SQL Server and Oracle DB, low-latency interactive apps, dev & test, boot volumes | Boot volumes, low-latency interactive apps, dev & test | Workloads that require sub-millisecond latency, and sustained IOPS performance or more than 64,000 IOPS or 1,000 MiB/s of throughput | Workloads that require sustained IOPS performance or more than 16,000 IOPS and I/O-intensive database workloads |
Volume Size | 1 GB – 16 TB | 1 GB – 16 TB | 4 GB – 16 TB | 4 GB – 16 TB |
Durability | 99.8% – 99.9% durability | 99.8% – 99.9% durability | 99.999% | 99.8% – 99.9% |
Max IOPS / Volume | 16,000 | 16,000 | 64,000 | 64,000 |
Max Throughput / Volume | 1000 MB/s | 250 MB/s | 1,000 MB/s | 1,000 MB/s |
Max IOPS / Instance | 260,000 | 260,000 | 160,000 | 260,000 |
Max IOPS / GB | N/A | N/A | 500 IOPS/GB | 50 IOPS/GB |
Max Throughput / Instance | 7,500 MB/s | 7,500 MB/s | 4,750 MB/s | 7,500 MB/s |
Latency | single digit millisecond | single digit millisecond | single digit millisecond | single digit millisecond |
Multi-Attach | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Volume Name | Throughput Optimized HDD | Cold HDD |
Volume type | st1 | sc1 |
Description | Low cost HDD volume designed for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads | Throughput-oriented storage for data that is infrequently accessed Scenarios where the lowest storage cost is important |
Use Cases | Big data, data warehouses, log processing | Colder data requiring fewer scans per day |
Volume Size | 125 GB – 16 TB | 125 GB – 16 TB |
Durability | 99.8% – 99.9% durability | 99.8% – 99.9% durability |
Max IOPS / Volume | 500 | 250 |
Max Throughput / Volume | 500 MB/s | 250 MB/s |
Max IOPS / Instance | 260,000 | 260,000 |
Max IOPS / GB | N/A | N/A |
Max Throughput / Instance | 7,500 MB/s | 7,500 MB/s |
Multi-Attach | No | No |
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