AWS Storage

Services
Mithun Technologies
[email protected]
+91-9980923226
Storage Types
• Object Storage vs. File Storage vs. Block Storage
• Object storage takes each piece of data and designates it as an object. Data is kept in separate storehouses versus files in folders and is
bundled with associated metadata and a unique identifier to form a storage pool.
• File storage stores data as a single piece of information in a folder to help organize it among other data. This is also called hierarchical
storage, imitating the way that paper files are stored. When you need access to data, your computer system needs to know the path to find
it.
• Block storage takes a file apart into singular blocks of data and then stores these blocks as separate pieces of data. Each piece of data has a
different address, so they don't need to be stored in a file structure.
Storage Options

• EBS
• S3
• EFS
• Snow Ball
• Storage Gateway
EBS (Elastic Block Store)
• A block storage (so you need to format it). This means you are able to choose which type of file
system you want.
• It is really fast
• It is relatively cheap
• With the new announcements from Amazon, you can store up to 16TB data per storage on SSD-s.
• You can snapshot an EBS (while it's still running) for backup reasons
• But it only exists in a particular region. Although you can migrate it to another region, you cannot
just access it across regions (only if you share it via the EC2; but that means you have a file
server)
• You need an EC2 instance to attach it to
• New feature (2017.Feb.15): You can now increase volume size, adjust performance, or change
the volume type while the volume is in use. You can continue to use your application while the
change takes effect.
o Every EC2 instance must have a “root” volume, which maybe or may not be EBS
o By default, EBS root volumes are set to be deleted when instance is terminated. However
we can choose to keep it

EC2 instance Root Volume

o You can add more additional EBS volumes to the instance

o Any additional volume attached to the instance at any time, is not deleted when the
instance is terminated

Root Volume

Additional
EC2 instance Volume
o This means that you can swap EBS volumes between different EC2 Instances by
“detaching” it from one & “attaching” it to another

Root Volume

Additional
EC2 instance #1 Volume

swap

Root Volume

Additional
EC2 instance #2 Volume
 Snapshot
o A snapshot is an image of an EBS volume that can be stored as a backup
o Also can be used to create a duplicate EBS volume
o You cannot attach or detached a snapshot to an EC2 instance
o To restore a snapshot, we need to create a new EBS volume using the snapshot as the
template

EBS Volume
Snapshot of EBS Duplicate of EBS
(original)
Volume Volume
EBS Volume Types
EBS General Purpose (SSD)
This volume type is suitable for small and medium workloads like Root disk EC2 volumes, small and medium database
workloads, frequently logs accessing workloads, etc. By default, SSD supports 3 IOPS (Input Output Operations per
Second)/GB means 1 GB volume will give 3 IOPS, and 10 GB volume will give 30 IOPS. Its storage capacity of one volume
ranges from 1 GB to 1 TB. The cost of one volume is $0.10 per GB for one month.

Provisioned IOPS (SSD)

This volume type is suitable for the most demanding I/O intensive, transactional workloads and large relational, EMR
and Hadoop workloads, etc. By default, IOPS SSD supports 30 IOPS/GB means 10GB volume will give 300 IOPS. Its
storage capacity of one volume ranges from 10GB to 1TB. The cost of one volume is $0.125 per GB for one month for
provisioned storage and $0.10 per provisioned IOPS for one month.

EBS Magnetic Volumes

It was formerly known as standard volumes. This volume type is suitable for ideal workloads like infrequently accessing
data, i.e. data backups for recovery, logs storage, etc. Its storage capacity of one volume ranges from 10GB to 1TB. The
cost of one volume is $0.05 per GB for one month for provisioned storage and $0. 05 per million I/O requests.
In EC2 instances, we store data in local storage which is available till the instance is running. However,
when we shut down the instance, the data gets lost. Thus, when we need to save anything, it is
advised to save it on Amazon EBS, as we can access and read the EBS volumes anytime, once we attach
the file to an EC2 instance.

Amazon EBS Benefits

Reliable and secure storage − Each of the EBS volume will automatically respond to its Availability
Zone to protect from component failure.

Secure − Amazon’s flexible access control policies allows to specify who can access which EBS volumes.
Access control plus encryption offers a strong defense-in-depth security strategy for data.

Higher performance − Amazon EBS uses SSD technology to deliver data results with consistent I/O
performance of application.

Easy data backup − Data backup can be saved by taking point-in-time snapshots of Amazon EBS
volumes.
S3 (Simple Storage Service)
• You can store files and "folders" but can't have locks, permissions etc like you would with a traditional
file system
• This means, by default you can't just mount S3 and use it as your webserver
• But it's perfect for storing your images and videos for your website
• Great for short term archiving (e.g. a few weeks). It's good for long term archiving too, but Glacier is
more cost efficient.
• Great for storing logs
• You can access the data from every region (extra costs may apply)
• Highly Available, Redundant. Basically data loss is not possible (99.999999999% durability, 99.9
uptime SLA)
• Much cheaper than EBS.
• You can serve the content directly to the internet, you can even have a full (static) website working
direct from S3, without an EC2 instance.
Permissions
Policies
Life Cycles
Standard
IA (Infrequent Access)
RRS
Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) is an Amazon S3 storage option that enables customers to store noncritical, reproducible
data at lower levels of redundancy than Amazon S3’s standard storage
Glacier
Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides durable storage with security features for data archiving
and backup. With Amazon Glacier, customers can store their data cost effectively for months, years, or even decades.
• Long term archive storage
• Extremely cheap to store
• Potentially very expensive to retrieve
• Takes up to 4 hours to "read back" your data (so only store items you know you won't need to retrieve for a long time)

Cross Region Replication

File limit is 5TB

We can create max 100 s3 buckets in one account.
Amazon S3 Features
• Low cost and Easy to Use − Using Amazon S3, the user can store a large amount of data at
very low charges.
• Secure − Amazon S3 supports data transfer over SSL and the data gets encrypted
automatically once it is uploaded. The user has complete control over their data by
configuring bucket policies using AWS IAM.
• Scalable − Using Amazon S3, there need not be any worry about storage concerns. We can
store as much data as we have and access it anytime.
• Higher performance − Amazon S3 is integrated with Amazon CloudFront, that distributes
content to the end users with low latency and provides high data transfer speeds without
any minimum usage commitments.
• Integrated with AWS services − Amazon S3 integrated with AWS services include Amazon
CloudFront, Amazon CLoudWatch, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon RDS, Amazon Route 53,
Amazon VPC, AWS Lambda, Amazon EBS, Amazon Dynamo DB, etc.
EFS
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable file storage for use with
Amazon EC2 instances. With Amazon EFS, storage capacity is elastic, growing and shrinking
automatically as you add and remove files.
• Network filesystem (that means it may have bigger latency but it can be shared across
several instances; even between regions)
• It is expensive compared to EBS (~10x more) but it gives extra features.
• It's a highly available service.
• You can attach the EFS storage to an EC2 Instance
• Can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously
• Since 2016.dec.20 it's possible to attach your EFS storage directly to on-premise servers via
Direct Connect. ()
•
Snow Ball

Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses devices designed to

be secure to transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS Cloud. Using
Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including
high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns.
With Snowball, you don’t need to write any code or purchase any hardware to
transfer your data. Simply create a job in the AWS Management Console ("Console")
and a Snowball device will be automatically shipped to you. Once it arrives, attach
the device to your local network, download and run the Snowball Client ("Client") to
establish a connection, and then use the Client to select the file directories that you
want to transfer to the device. The Client will then encrypt and transfer the files to
the device at high speed. Once the transfer is complete and the device is ready to
be returned, the E Ink shipping label will automatically update and you can track the
job status via Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS),

Storage Gateway

Storage Gateway provides integration between the on-premises IT environment and

the AWS storage infrastructure. The user can store data in the AWS cloud for
scalable, data security features and cost-efficient storage.
Glacier, S3, EFS allocates the storage for you based on your usage, while at EBS you
need to predefine the allocated storage. Which means, you need to over estimate.
( However it's easy to add more storage to your EBS volumes, it requires some
engineering, which means you always "overpay" your EBS storage, which makes it
even more expensive)
Questions ?