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Ameya
Ameya

Reputation: 1960

Comparative Application ebs vs s3

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.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 703

Answers (1)

John Rotenstein
John Rotenstein

Reputation: 270089

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.

Upvotes: 2

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