Amazon EBS
AWS Tutorial: Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
Welcome to the Amazon EBS lesson. Since Instance Stores delete your data when the server stops, we need a reliable, persistent hard drive for our virtual machines. This is where Amazon EBS comes in.
Why Learn Amazon EBS?
Whenever you launch an EC2 instance to run a website or a database, the operating system (Linux or Windows) is installed on an EBS volume. Understanding how to create, attach, and backup EBS volumes is a fundamental skill for any cloud architect.
Tutorial Overview
In this tutorial, you will learn:
- What an Amazon EBS Volume is.
- The difference between EBS and Instance Stores.
- How to backup EBS volumes using Snapshots.
What is Amazon EBS?
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides persistent block-level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. You can think of an EBS volume as a physical USB hard drive. You can attach it to your EC2 instance, format it, install an operating system, or use it to host a database.
Unlike an Instance Store, EBS volumes are located over the network within the same Availability Zone as your instance.
Persistence and Detachability
Because EBS volumes exist independently of the EC2 instance's lifecycle, your data is completely safe even if you stop or terminate the EC2 instance! You can easily detach an EBS volume from Server A and plug it into Server B within minutes, preserving all your files.
EBS Snapshots
To protect against accidental deletion or drive failure, you can take Snapshots of your EBS volumes. A snapshot is an exact point-in-time copy of your hard drive, which is safely stored in Amazon S3. You can use snapshots to instantly recreate your hard drive if disaster strikes.
Exercise
?Which feature of Amazon EBS allows you to take a point-in-time backup of your hard drive's data?