EBS Volume Types

Storage Options & Performance

General Purpose SSD

gp3 (Latest)

3,000-16,000 IOPS, 125-1,000 MiB/s

gp2 (Previous Gen)

Baseline 3 IOPS/GiB, burst to 3,000

Size Range

1 GiB - 16 TiB

Use Cases

Boot volumes, dev/test, small DBs

Provisioned IOPS SSD

io2 (Latest)

Up to 64,000 IOPS, 99.999% durability

io1 (Previous Gen)

Up to 64,000 IOPS, 99.9% durability

Multi-Attach

Attach to multiple instances

Critical Workloads

Databases, file systems

HDD Volume Types

st1 (Throughput Optimized)

Frequently accessed, throughput-intensive

  • • 125 GiB - 16 TiB
  • • Up to 500 MiB/s throughput
  • • Big data, data warehouses

sc1 (Cold HDD)

Infrequently accessed data

  • • 125 GiB - 16 TiB
  • • Up to 250 MiB/s throughput
  • • Lowest cost per GB

HDD Limitations

Important constraints

  • • Cannot be boot volumes
  • • Throughput optimized
  • • Lower IOPS than SSD

Performance Metrics

IOPS Performance

io2: 64,000 | gp3: 16,000 | gp2: 16,000

Throughput

gp3: 1,000 MiB/s | st1: 500 MiB/s

Latency

SSD: Single-digit ms | HDD: Double-digit ms

Durability

io2: 99.999% | Others: 99.999%

Cost Optimization

gp3 vs gp2

gp3 offers 20% lower cost than gp2

HDD Cost

sc1 is lowest cost per GB

Provisioned IOPS

Pay for provisioned IOPS separately

Right-sizing

Choose based on workload requirements

Volume Selection Guide

Boot Volumes

gp3 or gp2 recommended

Databases

io2 for critical, gp3 for general

Big Data

st1 for throughput workloads

Archive

sc1 for infrequent access

Volume Modification

Elastic Volumes

Modify size, type, IOPS online

Migration Path

gp2 → gp3 for cost savings

Limitations

6-hour cooldown between modifications

Best Practices

Monitor Performance

Use CloudWatch metrics

EBS-Optimized

Enable for consistent performance

Snapshot Strategy

Regular backups for data protection

EBS Volume Types Exam Tips

  • • gp3 is the latest general purpose SSD with better price/performance than gp2
  • • io2 provides higher durability (99.999%) and supports Multi-Attach
  • • HDD volumes (st1, sc1) cannot be used as boot volumes
  • • Use st1 for big data and throughput-intensive workloads
  • • sc1 is the lowest cost option for infrequently accessed data
Previous: EBS Core Concepts Next: Performance & Optimization
Back to Home Search Topics