Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provides flexible, persistent storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. In this technical session, we conduct a detailed analysis of all types of Amazon EBS block storage including General Purpose SSD (gp2) and Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1). Along the way, we will share Amazon EBS best practices for optimizing performance, managing snapshots and securing data.

1. © 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Rob Alexander, AWS Principal Solutions Architect
August 2016
Amazon EBS Deep Dive

2. (Flexible)
Block
Store
Elastic

3. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
EC2
instance

4. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
boot
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
EC2
instance
EBS
data
volume
EBS
data
volume

5. Separation of Compute and Storage
Persistent
block storage Compute
Memory

6. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone Availability Zone
AWS region
Replica

7. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
Amazon
S3
EBS snapshot
Availability Zone
Replica

8. How does an EBS snapshot work?
A B C
EBS volume
A B C
1

9. How does an EBS snapshot work?
A B C
EBS volume
A B C
12
C1
C1

10. D E -B
How does an EBS snapshot work?
A B
EBS volume
A B C
12
C1
C1
3
D E

11. D E -B
AC1
How does an EBS snapshot work?
A
EBS volume
A B C
12
C1
C1
3
D E

12. C1 D E
A
AC1
ED -B
How does an EBS snapshot work?
A
EBS volume
C1
3
D E
Create new EBS volume

13. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
Amazon
S3
EBS snapshot
Availability Zone
EBS
volume
Replica Replica

14. What is Amazon EBS?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
Amazon
S3
EBS snapshot
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
EBS snapshot
Replica Replica

15. EBS Snapshot: Public Data Sets
AWS region
Public data sets
available as EBS
snapshots:
Availability Zone
EBS
volume
https://aws.amazon.com/public-data-sets/
• Genomic
• Census
• Global weather
• Transportation
Replica

16. What if an EBS volume fails?
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
EC2
instance
AWS region
EBS
volume
Replica

17. What if an EBS volume fails?
Availability Zone
EBS
volume
EC2
instance
AWS region
Replica

18. What about EC2 instance termination?
Availability Zone
EBS
volume
EC2
instance
DeleteOnTermination = True
DeleteOnTermination = False
AWS region
Replica

19. What about EC2 instance failure?
Availability Zone
AWS region
EBS
volume
EC2
instance
Replica

20. What about EC2 instance failure?
Availability Zone
AWS region
EBS
volume
New
EC2
instance
Replica

21. EBS Enables EC2 Auto Recovery

22. EBS Enables EC2 Auto Recovery
StatusCheckFailed_System
StatusCheckFailed_Instance
CloudWatch
per-instance metrics:

23. Amazon CloudWatch Alarm Actions
Instance
status check fails?
REBOOT
System
status check fails?
RECOVER
Instance ID
Instance metadata
Private IP addresses
Elastic IP addresses
EBS volume attachments
Instance retains:
• Limited to C3, C4, M3, M4, R3, and T2 instance types with EBS only storage

24. Amazon EC2
Auto Recovery
Set your failed check threshold
Choose 1-minute period
and statistic minimum
Choose recover action
Metric = StatusCheckFailed_System
CloudWatch
console

25. Amazon EC2
Auto Reboot
Choose reboot action
Metric = StatusCheckFailed_Instance
CloudWatch
console

26. EBS Volume Types

27. EBS Volume Types
Hard disk driveSolid state drive

28. EBS Volume Types
General Purpose
SSD
gp2
Provisioned IOPS
SSD
io1
Throughput Optimized
HDD
st1
Cold
HDD
sc1
SSD HDD

29. EBS Volume Types: I/O Provisioned
General Purpose SSD
gp2
Throughput: 160 MB/s
Latency: Single-digit ms
Capacity: 1 GB to 16 TB
Baseline: 3 IOPS per GB up to 10,000
Burst: 3,000 IOPS (for volumes up to 1 TB)
Great for boot volumes, low latency applications and bursty databases

30. Burst Bucket: General Purpose SSD (GP2)
Max I/O credit per bucket is 5.4M
You can spend up to
3000 IOPS per second
Baseline performance = 3 IOPS per GiB or 100 IOPS
Always accumulating
3 IOPS per GiB per second
gp2

31. Burst & Baseline: General Purpose SSD (GP2)IOPS
0 1 16
1,000
2,000
3,000
8,000
10,000
BASELINE IOPS
(Baseline of 3 IOPS/GB)
Burstable to
3,000 IOPS
3 90.5
Volume size (TB)
~ 3334 GB

32. Time to Deplete a Full GP2 Credit Bucket
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
1 8 30 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900 950
MinutesofBurst
Volume size in GB
43 min 1 hour
10 hours

33. EBS Volume Types: I/O Provisioned
Provisioned IOPS SSD
io1
Baseline: 100 to 20,000 IOPS
Throughput: 320 MB/s
Latency: Single-digit ms
Capacity: 4 GB to 16 TB
Ideal for critical applications and databases with sustained IOPS

34. Scaling Provisioned IOPS SSD (IO1)IOPS
0 1 16
1,000
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
3 90.5
MAX PROVISIONED IOPS
(Maximum IOPS:GB ratio of 30:1)
Available Provisioned IOPS
Volume Size (TB)
~ 667 GB

35. EBS Volume Types: Throughput Provisioned
Throughput
Optimized HDD
st1
Baseline: 40 MB/s per TB up to 500 MB/s
Capacity: 500 GB to 16 TB
Burst: 250 MB/s per TB up to 500 MB/s
Ideal for large block, high throughput sequential workloads

36. Burst Bucket: Throughput Optimized HDD (ST1)
Max I/O bucket credit is 1 TB of
credit per TB in volume
You can spend up to
250 MB/s per TB
Baseline performance = 40 MB/s per TB
Always accumulating 40 MB/s per TB
st1

37. Up to 8 TB in I/O credit
Always accumulating 320 MB/s
You can spend up
to 500 MB/s
Burst Bucket: Example 8 TB ST1 Volume
Baseline performance = 320 MB/s
st1

38. Throughput Optimized HDD – Burst and Base
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
0.5 1 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
ThroughputinMB/s
Volume Size in TB
Burst Base
320
ST1

39. Cold HDD
sc1
EBS Volume Types: Throughput Provisioned
Baseline: 12 MB/s per TB up to 192 MB/s
Capacity: 500 GB to 16 TB
Burst: 80 MB/s per TB up to 250 MB/s
Ideal for sequential throughput workloads such as logging and backup

40. Burst Bucket: Cold HDD (SC1)
Max I/O bucket credit is 1 TB of
credit per TB in volume
You can spend up to 80
MB/s per TB
Baseline performance = 12 MB/s per TB
Always accumulating 12 MB/s per TB

41. Cold HDD – Burst and Base
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
0.5 1 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
ThroughputinMB/s
Volume size in TB
Burst Base
192
SC1

42. I/O Provisioned Volumes Throughput Provisioned Volumes
sc1st1io1gp2
$0.10 per GB $0.125 per GB
$0.065 per PIOPS
* All prices are per month and from the us-west-2 region as of April 2016
$0.045 per GB $0.025 per GB

43. EBS Volume Types
Magnetic

44. EBS Volume Types: Magnetic
Magnetic
Baseline: 100 IOPS best effort
Capacity: 1 GB to 1 TB
Burst: 40 MB/s to 90 MB/s best effort
$0.05 per GB
$0.05 per 1 million I/O requests

45. EBS Best Practices

46. EBS Best Practices
Performance

47. Performance: Counting IOPS
io1
gp2
Instance
Application
4 * 16 K random I/Os
IOPS = 4
Up to 256 KiB
400
Blocks 77, 125, 11, 400
11 125 77

48. Performance: Counting IOPS
io1
gp2
Instance
Application
4 * 16 K sequential I/Os
IOPS = 1
64 KiB
Blocks 11, 12, 13, 14
11 12 13 14

49. Performance: Counting Throughput
Instance
Application
Up to 1 MB/s
4 3 2 1
4 * 1 MiB sequential I/Os
sc1
st1
MB/s = 4

50. Performance: Counting Throughput
Instance
Applications
87 621 2 1
2 * 1 MB sequential I/Os
sc1
st1
MB/s = 4
2 * 16 K random I/Os

51. Performance: Burst Balance
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
BurstBalance%
Time in Hours
1 MB Sequential 16 KB Random
4TB SC1 Volume
1 MB Sequential:
500 MB/s for 3 hours
16 KB Random:
8 MB/s for 3 hours

52. Performance: Verifying ST1 & SC1 Workloads
iostat
256 sectors x 512 bytes/sector = 128 KiB

53. 128 KiB
Performance: Verifying ST1 & SC1 Workloads
CloudWatch
Console

54. Under
64 KiB?
Performance: Verifying ST1 & SC1 Workloads
Small or
random IOPS
likely
CloudWatch
Console

55. Stuck
around
44 KiB?
Performance: Verifying ST1 & SC1 Workloads
CloudWatch
Console
Upgrade your kernel
to at least 3.8

56. Performance: Bandwidth Matters
EBSc3.2xlarge
EC2
instances
Internet
Databases
~ 125 MB/s
S3
c3.8xlarge
10 Gbps ~ 1250 MB/s

57. Performance: EBS-Optimized Instances
For max throughput statistics per instance types, see:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSOptimized.html
• Dedicated network bandwidth for EBS I/O
• Enabled by default on c4, d2, and m4 instances
• Can be enabled at instance launch or on a running instance
• Not an option on some 10 Gbps instance types
(c3.8xlarge, r3.8xlarge, i2.8xlarge)

58. Performance: EBS-Optimized Instances
EBS
EC2
instances InternetDatabases
c3.2xlarge
~ 125 MB/s
S3

59. Performance: Bandwidth Matters
c3.xlarge
EBS-optimized
dedicated 500 Mbps
~ 62.5 MB/s
2 TB GP2 volume:
6,000 IOPS
160 MB/s max throughput
4,000 16K IOPS
c3.2xlarge
EBS-optimized
dedicated 1 Gbps
~ 125 MB/s
8,000 16K IOPS
2 TB GP2 volume:
6,000 IOPS
160 MB/s max throughput

60. Performance: Throughput Workload
EC2
instances InternetDatabases
m4.10xlarge
S310 Gbps ~ 1250 MB/s
~ 500 MB/s
32,000 16K IOPS
8 TB ST1 volume:
320 MB/s base
500 MB/s burst

61. Performance: I/O Workload
EC2
instances InternetDatabases
m4.10xlarge
S310 Gbps ~ 1250 MB/s
~ 500 MB/s
32,000 16K IOPS
1 TB io1 volume:
16,000 IOPS

62. Performance: I/O Workload
EC2
instances InternetDatabases
m4.10xlarge
S310 Gbps ~ 1250 MB/s
~ 500 MB/s
32,000 16K IOPS
RAID0
2 * 1 TB io1 volumes:
32,000 IOPS

63. Best Practice: RAID
When to RAID?
• Storage requirement > 16 TB
• Throughput requirement > 500 MB/s
• IOPS requirement > 20,000 @ 16K

64. Best Practice: RAID
EBS
volume
Availability Zone
AWS region
EC2
instance
EBS
volume
RAID0RAID10
Replica Replica

65. Best Practice: RAID
Avoid RAID for redundancy
• RAID1 halves available EBS bandwidth
• RAID5/6 loses 20 – 30% of usable I/O to parity

66. Performance: Volume Initialization
New EBS volume? New EBS volume from snapshot?
• Attach and its ready to go • Initialize for best performance
• Random read across volume

67. EBS Best Practices
Performance
Management

68. Best Practice: Taking Snapshots
Quiesce I/O
1. Database: FLUSH and LOCK tables
2. Filesystem: sync and fsfreeze
3. EBS: snapshot all volumes
When CreateSnapshot API returns
success, it is safe to resume

69. Best Practice: Automate Snapshots
Key ingredients:
AWS Lambda Amazon EC2
Run command
Tagging
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/run-command/

70. Best Practice: Automate Snapshots
AWS Lambda
scheduled event:
daily snapshots
EC2
instances
Backup
Retention
30 days
Search for instances
tagged “Backup”
EC2 Run commands to
fsfreeze
Snapshot all
attached volumes
Tag snapshots with
expire date
1. 2. 3. 4.

71. Best Practice: Automate Snapshot Expiration
AWS Lambda
scheduled event:
daily expire
Search for snapshots
tagged to “Expire On”
today
Delete expired
snapshots
1. 2.
EBS
snapshots
Backup
ExpireOn
Date

72. EBS Best Practices
Performance
Management
Security

73. Best Practice: Security
EBS
encryption
• Attach both encrypted and unencrypted
• No volume performance impact
• Any current generation instance
• Supported by all EBS volume types
• Snapshots also encrypted
• No extra cost

74. Best Practice: Security
EBS encryption:
data volumes

75. Best Practice: Security
Create a new AWS KMS Master key for EBS
• Define key rotation policy
• Enable AWS CloudTrail auditing
• Control who can use key
• Control who can administer key

76. Best Practice: Security
EBS encryption:
data volumes

77. Best Practice: Security
EBS
volume
EBS
master
key
AWS KMS
EBS
volume
EBS
volume
Data key 1
Data key 2
Data key 3Envelope encryption
• Limits exposure risk
• Performance
• Simplifies key management

78. Best Practice: Security
EBS encryption:
boot volumes

79. Summary
Use encryption if
you need it
Take snapshots,
tag snapshots
Select the right
instance for your
workload
Select the right
volume for your
workload

80. Thank you!