Performance & Optimization

IOPS, Throughput & Monitoring

IOPS Performance

Baseline IOPS

gp3: 3,000 | gp2: 3 IOPS/GiB

Burst Credits

gp2 can burst to 3,000 IOPS

Provisioned IOPS

io2: Up to 64,000 IOPS

IOPS:GiB Ratio

io2: 500:1 | io1: 50:1

Throughput Performance

gp3 Throughput

125-1,000 MiB/s independently

gp2 Throughput

Up to 250 MiB/s

HDD Throughput

st1: 500 MiB/s | sc1: 250 MiB/s

Instance Limits

EBS-optimized bandwidth limits

EBS-Optimized Instances

Dedicated Bandwidth

Separate network for EBS traffic

  • • Consistent performance
  • • No network contention
  • • Higher throughput

Instance Types

Modern instances support by default

  • • M5, C5, R5 and newer
  • • Can enable on older types
  • • Additional cost for older

Bandwidth Limits

Instance-specific EBS bandwidth

  • • t3.micro: Up to 2,085 Mbps
  • • m5.large: Up to 4,750 Mbps
  • • Check instance specs

Performance Monitoring

CloudWatch Metrics

VolumeReadOps, VolumeWriteOps

Queue Depth

VolumeQueueLength metric

Burst Balance

BurstBalance for gp2 volumes

Alarms

Set up performance alerts

Optimization Techniques

Pre-warming

Initialize volumes from snapshots

RAID Configuration

RAID 0 for performance, RAID 1 for redundancy

Application Tuning

Optimize I/O patterns and queue depth

Instance Placement

Use placement groups for consistency

Performance Troubleshooting

Low IOPS

Check burst balance, upgrade volume type

High Latency

Enable EBS-optimized, check queue depth

Throttling

Instance bandwidth limits reached

Inconsistent Performance

Network contention, use dedicated bandwidth

Performance Optimization Exam Tips

  • • EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated bandwidth for consistent performance
  • • gp2 volumes use burst credits; monitor BurstBalance metric to avoid performance degradation
  • • gp3 allows independent scaling of IOPS and throughput for better cost optimization
  • • Pre-warm volumes created from snapshots by reading all blocks before production use
  • • Use CloudWatch metrics to monitor volume performance and set up alarms
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