I am currently looking for a way of easily distributing customised volumes to clients.
An approach I am looking at is creating RAW disk images, saving them to S3 and having clients import them as snapshots using the AWS CLI.
My question is - who pays for the data access request/data transfer?
...I'm assuming its bucket owner as there is no "requester-pays" option for the Import-Snapshot command. Has anybody done anything similar?
Another approach is directly sharing snapshots to a clients account - but this involves an added charge on our part to create the ideal sized volumes + generate the snapshots to share.
Is there a better method of generating + sharing data (essentially what would become EBS volumes) of varying sizes and content?
The easiest method would be to create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), which is a bootable snapshot. You can list this it as a Community AMI.
Your clients can select the AMI when launching an Amazon EC2 instance. The boot disk will be exactly as you configured -- with the operating system, your application and all configurations that were saved on the disk.
There is no cost to you when a client uses the AMI.
See: Make an AMI public - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Related
I've looked at EFS and EBS Multi-Attach, but neither support Windows. I've looked at S3, but it's blob storage (I guess?), not a proper volume.
I just want a simple volume that I can mount from multiple instances. I realize I could just set up a share on one of the instances, but I'd prefer it not be instance-dependent (IE if I do scaling, etc).
Ideally I'd be able to access it as a mounted disk, but I'd also be fine with a mapped network drive.
Is there an AWS service that will do this?
I think you can mount an S3 bucket on ec2 instances.
Reference:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/storage/mounting-amazon-s3-to-an-amazon-ec2-instance-using-a-private-connection-to-s3-file-gateway/
I am new to AWS and trying to understand it.
Presently i have a small Django App.
I am planning to have an EC2 instance of type t3.small (2 cpus and 2 GB ram)
I will have the following EBS storages:
1) EBS root system: 10GB (mainly used for OS and other config files)
2) Attached EBS: 20GB (mainly used to store all the code and images and videos etc)
I will keep taking snapshot of both the EBS volumes daily.
I want my images and videos only accessible from the EC2 instance.
So Is this approach a good approach. or i have to use S3/
I'll go for storing in S3 for many reasons :
Duarbility : S3 is 99,99999999 (11x9). Data is replicated in all AZ of the selected region. You can also easily setup a Cross Region Replication for better data durability and security.
Price: You pay only for the disk space you're using it. You don't have to specify a volume size like with EBS.
Scalibility : You add data as you go and the bucket will scale to infinite.
If your application become successful and you have more traffic you should go to a horizontal scaling using AutoScaling and LoadBalancer and that means multiple EC2 instances. In that case it will be so easier to access Data on S3 instead on an EBS attached to an instance.
I'm trying AWS auto-scaling for the first time, as far as I understand it creates instances if for example my CPU Utilization reaches critical level, that I define.
So I am curious, after I lunch my instance I spend a fair amount of time configuring it and copying the data, if AWS auto-scales my instance how will it configure the new instances and move the data to it?
You can't store any data that you want to keep on an instance that is part of an autoscaling group (well you can, but you will lose it).
There are (at least) two ways to answer your question:
Create a 'golden image', in other words spin-up an instance, configure it, install the software etc and then save it as an AMI (amazon machine image). Then tell the autoscaling group to use that AMI each time an instance starts - it will be pre-configured when it starts.
Put a script on the instance that tells the instance how to configure itself when it starts up (in the user data). SO basically each time an instance scales up, it runs the script and does all the steps it needs to to configure itself.
As for you data, best practice would be to store any data you want to keep in a database or object store that is not on the instance - so something like RDS, DynamoDB or even S3 objects.
You could also use AWS EFS, store there your data/scripts that the EC2 Instances will be sharing, and automatically mount it every time a new EC2 Instance is created via /etc/fstab.
Once you have configured the EFS to be mounted on the EC2 Instance (/etc/fstab), you should create a new AMI, and use this new AMI to create a new Launch Configuration and AutoScaling Group, so that the new Instances automatically mount your EFS and are able to consume that shared data.
https://aws.amazon.com/efs/faq/
Q. What use cases is Amazon EFS intended for?
Amazon EFS is designed to provide performance for a broad spectrum of
workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media
processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home
directories.
Q. When should I use Amazon EFS vs. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
vs. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers cloud storage services to support a
wide range of storage workloads.
Amazon EFS is a file storage service for use with Amazon EC2. Amazon
EFS provides a file system interface, file system access semantics
(such as strong consistency and file locking), and
concurrently-accessible storage for up to thousands of Amazon EC2
instances. Amazon EBS is a block level storage service for use with
Amazon EC2. Amazon EBS can deliver performance for workloads that
require the lowest-latency access to data from a single EC2 instance.
Amazon S3 is an object storage service. Amazon S3 makes data available
through an Internet API that can be accessed anywhere.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/efs/latest/ug/mount-fs-auto-mount-onreboot.html
You can use the file fstab to automatically mount your Amazon EFS file
system whenever the Amazon EC2 instance it is mounted on reboots.
There are two ways to set up automatic mounting. You can update the
/etc/fstab file in your EC2 instance after you connect to the instance
for the first time, or you can configure automatic mounting of your
EFS file system when you create your EC2 instance.
I recommend using a shared data container if it is data that is updated and the updated data is needed by all instances that might be spinning up.
If it is database data or you could store the needed data in a database I would consider using an RDS.
If it is static data only used to configure the instances like dumps or configuration files which are not updated by running instances then I would recommend pulling them from CloudFlare or S3 of iT is not possible to pull them from a repository.
Good luck
Which one is better for storing pictures and videos uploaded by user ?
Amazon s3 or Filesystem EC2 ?
While opinion-based questions are discouraged on StackOverflow, and answers always depend upon the particular situation, it is highly likely that Amazon S3 is your better choice.
You didn't say whether only wish to store the data, or whether you also wish to serve the data out to users. I'll assume both.
Benefits of using Amazon S3 to store static assets such as pictures and videos:
S3 is pay-as-you-go (only pay for the storage consumed, with different options depending upon how often/fast you wish to retrieve the objects)
S3 is highly available: You don't need to run any servers
S3 is highly durable: Your data is duplicated across three data centres, so it is more resilient to failure
S3 is highly scalable: It can handle massive volumes of requests. If you served content from Amazon EC2, you'd have to scale-out to meet requests
S3 has in-built security at the object, bucket and user level.
Basically, Amazon S3 is a fully-managed storage service that can serve static assets out to the Internet.
If you were to store data on an Amazon EC2 instance, and serve the content from the EC2 instance:
You would need to pre-provision storage using Amazon EBS volumes (and you pay for the entire volume even if it isn't all used)
You would need to Snapshot the EBS volumes to improve durability (EBS Snapshots are stored in Amazon S3, replicated between data centres)
You would need to scale your EC2 instances (make them bigger, or add more) to handle the workload
You would need to replicate data between instances if you are running multiple EC2 instances to meet request volumes
You would need to install and configure the software on the EC2 instance(s) to manage security, content serving, monitoring, etc.
The only benefit of storing this static data directly on an Amazon EC2 instance rather than Amazon S3 is that it is immediately accessible to software running on the instance. This makes the code simpler and access faster.
There is also the option of using Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), which is NAS-like storage. You can mount an EFS volume simultaneously on multiple EC2 instances. Data is replicated between multiple Availability Zones. It is charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, it is only the storage layer - you'd still need to use Amazon EC2 instance(s) to serve the content to the Internet.
I am new to cloud environment. I do understand the definition and storage types EBS and S3. I wanted to understand the application of EBS as compared to S3.
I do understand EBS looks like a device for heavy though put operations. I cannot find any application where this can be used in comparison to S3. I could think of putting server logs on EBS on magnetic storage, as one EBS can be attached to one instance.
S3 you can use the scaling property to add some heavy data and expand in real time. We can deploy our slef managed dbs on this service.
Please correct me if I am wrong. Please help me understand what is best suited for what and application of them in comparison with one another.
As you stated, they are primarily different types of storage:
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) is a persistent disk-storage service, which provides storage volumes to a virtual machine (similar to VMDK files in VMWare)
Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is an object store system that stores files as objects and optionally makes them available across the Internet.
So, how do people choose which to use? It's quite simple... If they need a volume mounted on an Amazon EC2 instance, they need to use Amazon EBS. It gives them a C:, D: drive, etc in Windows and a mountable volume in Linux. Computers traditionally expect to have locally-attached disk storage. Put simply: If the operating system or an application running on an Amazon EC2 instance wants to store data locally, it will use EBS.
EBS Volumes are actually stored on two physical devices in case of failure, but an EBS volume appears as a single volume. The volume size must be selected when the volume is created. The volume exists in a single Availability Zone and can only be attached to EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone. EBS Volumes persist even when the attached EC2 instance is Stopped; when the instance is Started again, the disk remains attached and all data has been presrved.
Amazon S3, however, is something quite different. It is a storage service that allows files to be uploaded/downloaded (PutObject, GetObject) and files are replicated across at least three data centers. Files can optionally be accessed via the Internet via HTTP/HTTPS without requiring a web server. There are no limits on the amount of data that can be stored. Access can be granted per-object, per-bucket via a Bucket Policy, or via IAM Users and Groups.
Amazon S3 is a good option when data needs to be shared (both locally and across the Internet), retained for long periods, backed-up (or even for storing backups) and made accessible to other systems. However, applications need to specifically coded to use Amazon S3 and many traditional application expect to store data on a local drive rather than on a separate storage service.
While Amazon S3 has many benefits, there are still situations where Amazon EBS is a better storage choice:
When using applications that expect to store data locally
For storing temporary files
When applications want to partially update files, because the smallest storage unit in S3 is a file and updating a part of a file requires re-uploading the whole file
For very High-IO situations, such as databases (EBS Provisioned IOPS can provide volumes up to 20,000 IOPS)
For creating volume snapshots as backups
For creating Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that can be used to boot EC2 instances
Bottom line: They are primarily different types of storage and each have their own usage sweet-spot, just like a Database is a good form of storage depending upon the situation.