Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - How to choose the right block storage for your workload (CMP202)

Summary

Reena Gupta and Aaron Chen from the EC2 storage team presented on choosing the right block storage for various workloads.
They discussed customer requirements such as high IOPS, low latency, data persistence, and regular backups.
Amazon EC2 offers over 650 instance types with different compute, memory, and storage specifications, including local instance store and Amazon EBS.
Local instance store is directly attached to the instance, while EBS is network-attached.
Storage optimized instances (iFamily) are designed for storage-intensive workloads, offering up to 3.2 million IOPS and low latency.
Nitro SSDs are used in iFamily instances to deliver consistent performance and reduced latency.
Data persistency on local instance store is maintained during the instance's lifespan but not through stopping, terminating, or hibernating events.
EBS offers high performance, availability, and durability, with features like snapshots, elastic volumes, and fast snapshot restore.
Choosing between instance store and EBS depends on performance requirements, data persistency needs, and other features.
Real customer examples were provided to illustrate the decision-making process for selecting block storage solutions.

The choice between local instance store and Amazon EBS is highly dependent on specific workload requirements and the need for data persistency.
Nitro SSDs significantly improve performance and latency for storage-intensive workloads, making them suitable for real-time applications.
EBS offers more features for data management, such as snapshots and elastic volumes, which can be crucial for mission-critical workloads.
The presentation emphasized the importance of testing and proof of concept (POC) to ensure the chosen storage solution meets performance expectations.
The session provided a flowchart and a comparison table to help attendees navigate the decision-making process for selecting the appropriate block storage.
AWS continues to innovate in storage solutions, as evidenced by the introduction of new instance types and features like Nitro SSDs and IO2 Block Express volumes.