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EBS vs Instance Store

EBS vs EC2 Instance StoreΒΆ

  • Some instances do not come with Root EBS Volumes
  • Instead, they come with "EC2 Instance Store" (= [[ephemeral storage]])
  • Instance store is physically attached to the machine (EBS Volume is a [[network drive]])
  • Pros:
    • Better I/O performance
    • Good for [[buffer]] / [[cache]] / [[scratch data]] / [[temporary content]]
    • Data survives reboots
  • Cons:
    • On stop or termination, the EC2 Instance Store is lost
    • You can't resize the instance store
    • Backups must be operated by the user

We can see this if we were to launch an instance like m5ad.2xlarge that has a 300 GB SSD.