I am using "m5d.8xlarge" ec2 instance, which comes ready with 2*600G SSD Volumes, directly attached. They are appearing on the OS, however no mention on the console, as I can't retrieve any info about them.
And it is showing as well the serial of the volumes as AWS-*** not as normal EBS volumes vol***.
I read that these are ephemeral or something; I want to have any AWS official docs that thoroughly explain how this local storage works, as we are hosting prod workload on it, appreciate if someone can explain or provide docs.
"m5d.8xlarge" ec2 instances comes with 2 ephimeral storage which are instance store volume.
Instance store volumes (docs) are directly attached to underlying hardware to reduce latency and increase IOPS and data throughput.
However there is a caveat, if you ec2 instance is terminated,stops, hibernated or stopped or underlying hardware gets shutdown due to some glitch all the data stored on on these ephemeral storage will be lost.
Generally instance store volumes are used for buffer,cache.
In order to confirm you can follow this https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/ec2-linux-instance-store-volumes/ :-
ssh into ec2 instance
install nvme-cli tool -> sudo yum instal nvme-cli
sudo nvme list - to list all instance store volumes
if you want data to persist you should go for EBS or EFS
EBS docs, EFS docs
In short If you want to access data with super low latency and you can afford to loose data go for instance store but if it is business critical data for example database workload go for EBS, YOu can still achieve very high IOPS and throughput using IO1,IO2 volume types or if you have a want to go even further use nitro ec2 instance type which gives maximum 64000 IOPS.
Play with EBS volume types to increase IOPS and throughput https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-volume-types.html
Related
I have installed MariaDB on an EC2 instance. EC2 instance is small in size as our product is in development phase and we have very less traffic.
I want to keep an EBS volume for MariaDB data storage, so that as our traffic increases we can attach the EBS volume to a bigger EC2 instance and my data get transferred automatically.
Is keeping data storage on EBS(network) is a good approach? Will it not lead to more latent read/write?
If it won't impact my performance, what is the way to configure it?
An EC2 instance is made of 2 things - Compute & Storage.
Storage is basically an EBS volume (kind of Hard Disk of your laptop) that includes your OS files as well as other files for the software installed on your EC2.
Since, you are running your database on an EC2 instance, this EBS volume will also store your MariaDB database files on the same EBS where your OS is installed. It is not like, you can store MariaDB data on some other EBS.
So, when your data grows, you can expand EBS volume of your existing EC2 instance. You can follow this tutorial to learn how to do that - Increase the size of an Amazon EBS volume on an EC2 instance
Second thing is about performance. If your traffic increases, and you feel, you need more processing power (RAM or CPU), in that case you can upgrade your instance family. Refer this to see how to do that - Change the instance type.
Recommendation
As you will be spending a fixed monthly cost to run the EC2, my recommendation would be to use Aurora Serverless v2 with minimum capacity you need initially. Later, it can automatically scale itself when the traffic grows.
I am learning about aws and using ec2 instances. I am trying to understand what a volume is.
I have read from the aws site that:
An Amazon EBS volume is a durable, block-level storage device that you
can attach to your instances. After you attach a volume to an
instance, you can use it as you would use a physical hard drive.
Is it where things are stored when I install things like npm and node? Does it function like the harddrive o my server?
AWS EBS is block storage volume, and for the ease of understanding, yes you can consider it same as hard drive, however with more benefits over traditional hard drive. few of them are:
You can increase/decrease size of the storage as per your requirement
(Hence name Elastic)
You can add multiple ebs to your instances, for example 20 GB of volume1 and 30 GB of volume2
And for the question you asked if you can install npm & node yes you
can as it would be attached to your EC2 instance and your instance
can easily utilised attached data, modules,etc
For further explanation you can refer this user guide from AWS on EBS: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-volumes.html
Yes it is exactly like a hard drive on your server and you can have multiple devices.
The cool thing is that you also can expand them if you need extra space.
where things are stored when I install things like npm and node
Yes, technically ebs volume is virtual storage drive which is
connected to your instance through network, ( flash drive connected over network).
Since network is involved which implicitly means there will be some latency because of data transfer through network.
The data is persistent even if instance stops,terminates, hibernates or hardware failure.
Since it is network drive it can be attached or detached to any other instance.
Adding to this there is another type of storage which you will find called as instance store
You can specify instance store volumes for an instance only when you launch it. You can't detach an instance store volume from one instance and attach it to a different instance.
it gives very high IOPS because it is directly (physically) attached to instance.
The use case for instance store would where data changes rapidly like for cache or buffers.
Your data will be lost if any of these events happens like The underlying disk drive fails The instance stops, instance hibernates instance terminates or drive failure.
I have one service running on my t2.micro instance. How can i confirm if there is any bandwidth and storage limit or not.
Attached is that status screen shot of it.
Please guide me on this.
Thanks
Bandwidth
The only bandwidth limitation in AWS is related to the Instance Type of Amazon EC2 instances.
Put simply, smaller instances have less bandwidth than larger instances. You'll see this in the Launch Instance screen (right column):
The documentation doesn't specifically say what bandwidth you are given, but you can run some performance tests to determine available throughput.
Storage
There are two types of disk storage for Amazon EC2 instances:
Instance Storage
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
Instance Storage is disk storage that is directly-attached to the instance (or, more accurately, to the host computer running the instance). As you'll see in the Instance Storage column in the above picture, not all EC2 instances have Instance Storage -- some of them just say "EBS only", meaning that it is not available.
For instance types that provide Instance Storage, the size is fixed and is again based on the Instance Type.
The most important thing to know about Instance Storage is that it is lost when an instance is stopped/terminated. This is because the virtual machine is deleted, which gives back the CPU, RAM and Instance Storage. Thus, it is only useful for temporary files, virtual memory swap files and local cache. Do not store the only copy of important data on Instance Storage.
Amazon EBS is network-attached storage. Data is retained when instances are stopped. When they are later started, the disks are exactly the same as when the instance was turned off. When an instance is Terminated, the EBS volume can optionally be kept or deleted.
EBS volumes have the advantage that you can configure a disk of any size up to 16TB and there are various different types of volumes to trade-off cost/performance.
Bottom line: Your t2.micro instance has no Instance Storage. It has EBS volumes that you have attached (at whatever size you configured). It has Low to Moderate network bandwidth.
Using ec2 Windows instance with Instance storage (let's say 32GB SSD) - where OS and its settings are stored? Like Program Files, User profiles. Are they all stored on Instance Storage? As far as I understood from other topics Instance storage is not-persistent and doesn't survive shutdowns/terminations. Does that mean I will lose everything under C: drive if I turn it off?
Can I use EBS storage as a default storage for OS (C drive)? Can I map multiple EBS storages to one Windows storage?
If above is true, then I will be charged for the capacity used by OS on EBS instance? It would be around 20GB I believe. Is that correct?
I am quite new in aws, and before paying for such instances or EBS I would like to know how this technical and billing model is working.
Thank you!
The Storage for the Root device is dependent on the AMI (EBS-Backed or Instance Store-Backed) used to launch the instance.
As far as I understood from other topics Instance storage is
not-persistent and doesn't survive shutdowns/terminations.
If the Root storage device is Instance Store, Stopping (shutdown) the instance is not possible. On termination, Both the storage and Instance does not survive. The Instance does not survive once terminated even if the AMI is EBS-Backed, but you can persist the Root Volume by setting the DeleteOnTermination flag set to False.
Does that mean I will lose everything under C: drive if I turn it off?
You cannot turn off (shutdown) an Instance Store-backed instance.
Can I use EBS storage as a default storage for OS (C drive)?
Yes, Choose an EBS backed Windows AMI.
Can I map multiple EBS storages to one Windows storage?
Yes, multiple EBS Volumes can be attached to one EC2 Windows Instance.
If above is true, then I will be charged for the capacity used by OS
on EBS instance?
You will be charged for the total size of the EBS volumes attached to the instance including the Root Device.
It would be around 20GB I believe. Is that correct?
The EBS Volume Size is adjustable. The upper Size limit is 16TiB.
Read Storage for Root Device and Ec2 Root Device Volume
Please spend more time on the AWS documentation, I don't think here is enough to cover all your question.
Only for specify EC2 instance come with attached SSD storage AKA instance storage. Bare in mind that, this instance storage doesn't come with Snapshot capabilities, so you must backup the file yourself. This is mean for people who need fastest disk access to process their data.
Only EBS allow you do multiple snapshot.
You can always create an AMI image for your instance after complete the deployment. AMI image is store inside EBS, so you will not lost the initial instance if you do this, so for new instance, you just trigger load it from AMI.
If you "Terminate" an instance, it will delete the virtual image. There is no way to recover it even with EBS, unless you make a snapshot. However, attached EBS storage will not be deleted.
EBS is calculate by Per GB and give you 1GB x 3 IOPS, with base 100 IOPS given. This is not enough if anyone want to carry out disk I/O intensive task.
I need to deploy Cassandra on AWS but am confused as to what type of AWS storage is most suitable for Cassandra.
The Datastax documentation here:
http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/3.0/cassandra/planning/planPlanningEC2.html
says that EBS volumes are recommended. At the same time the Datastax AMI documentation:
http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/2.1/cassandra/install/installAMI.html
says that:
Uses RAID0 ephemeral disks for data storage and commit logs.
Launches EBS-backed instances for faster start-up, not database
storage.
So which one is the recommended storage type for Cassandra? The EBS storage or the Instance storage?
Many of the new eC2 instances are EBS only (http://www.ec2instances.info/) I am not sure when the cassandra document was written but EBS disk have improved a lot recently and amazon launches new type frequently, so you will be able to find what you're looking for with one of the type
You can check https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSVolumeTypes.html?icmpid=docs_ec2_console and its recommended Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)
To add a reason why AWS is moving to EBS and why it would be good for cassandra data is because of ephemeral type of data, you might not want your data to disappear if your instance is terminated (because of a crash or a stop you made) at least when your instance is gone, you still have access to your data and can attach the EBS volume to a new instance (really useful also when up/down-grading instances)
I came upon this presentation, which clearly answers the question with a very interesting use case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R-mgOcOSd4
To summarize:
EBS has changed a lot since 2011 when major companies like Netflix
had problems with it.
EBS and GP2 are now the recommended storage
for Cassandra and you should not expect any bottlenecks there.
Datastax have recently updated their documentation to also recommend
EBS:
http://docs.datastax.com/en/cassandra/3.0/cassandra/planning/planPlanningEC2.html
No doubt EBS,
Memory optimized boxes are best suited for cassandra
T2
T2 are Burstable Performance Instances that offer a baseline level of CPU performance with the capability to burst above the baseline
M4
M4 instances are the most recent general-purpose instances. The M4 family of instances offers a balance of memory, network, and compute resources, and it is a better option for several applications
C4
These instances are recent additions to the compute-optimized instances that feature maximum performance processors with the lowest compute/price performance in EC2 Instance types.
X1
These instances are best suited for enterprise-class, large-scale, in-memory applications and offer the lowest price for each GiB of RAM among AWS EC2 instance types. The X1 instances are the latest addition to the EC2 memory-optimized instance group and are intended for executing high-scale, in-memory databases and in-memory applications over the AWS cloud.
for pricing and other information
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/