Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
This reference captures information addressing common gotchas and frequently asked questions for Amazon EBS to support accurate model responses. It is not a complete specification. The authoritative source for current specifications, limits, quotas, and API behavior is the Amazon EBS User Guide, Amazon EC2 API Reference, Amazon EBS product page, and Amazon EBS FAQs. Retrieve current specifications, limits, and quotas from those pages before citing specifics; cite figures only from those pages.
1. Overview
What it is: Amazon EBS is high-performance, durable block storage for Amazon EC2: network-attached volumes that persist independently of the instance and are replicated within an Availability Zone, with a range of SSD and HDD volume types to match performance and cost to the workload.
Well-suited for: workloads that need durable, low-latency block storage attached to a single EC2 instance, such as boot volumes, databases, transactional applications and file systems, dev/test environments, sequential batch processing, and log and data warehouse scans.
2. Service Information
You MUST retrieve information from the linked documentation in the below table before answering any user question on the related topic.
| Topic | Example service characteristics, features, and actions | Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| Access and protocols | single-instance attachment; Availability Zone scope; Multi-Attach; cross-AZ and cross-Region portability | Amazon EBS volumes |
| Deployment and availability | Availability Zone scope; in-AZ replication; snapshot portability | Amazon EBS overview |
| Volume types | gp3; io2 Block Express; st1; sc1; boot volume requirements | Amazon EBS volume types |
| Data protection and management | snapshots; Volume Clones; Elastic Volumes; Fast Snapshot Restore; Provisioned Rate for Volume Initialization; time-based snapshot copy; snapshot archive; Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager; Recycle Bin | Amazon EBS snapshots, Copy an Amazon EBS volume, EBS direct APIs |
| Performance | instance EBS bandwidth ceiling; gp3 provisioned performance; lazy-load on first read | Amazon EBS volume performance |
| Security | encryption by default; encrypted snapshot sharing; least-privilege IAM on destructive actions; tags and descriptions | Security in Amazon EBS |
| Health and monitoring | CloudWatch metrics; alarms; CloudTrail | Monitoring Amazon EBS |
| Pricing | provisioned capacity; provisioned performance; snapshot storage; snapshot archive; Fast Snapshot Restore; detached-volume charges; gp2-to-gp3 migration (not exhaustive, review pricing page for the full list of pricing dimensions) | Amazon EBS pricing |
Related services and integrations
You MUST retrieve information from the linked documentation in the below table before answering any user question on the related service.
| Example service | Example characteristics and common workloads | Documentation |
|---|---|---|
| EC2 instance store | ephemeral local block storage; SSD and HDD variants; data loss on stop, terminate, hibernate, or hardware failure | Instance store temporary block storage for EC2 instances, Amazon EC2 FAQs |
| Amazon EKS (EBS CSI driver) | Kubernetes persistent and ephemeral volumes on EBS | Use Kubernetes volume storage with Amazon EBS |
3. Troubleshooting
You MUST retrieve information from the linked documentation in the below table before providing the user with any guidance on the related area.
| Example area | Example errors | Example fixes | Documentation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity and scaling | resize not reflected in OS; modification limits | extend the OS file system after the volume optimizes | Extend the file system after resizing, Modify a volume |
| Performance | high latency; slow first reads on restored volumes | check the instance bandwidth ceiling; pre-hydrate restored volumes | Amazon EBS-optimized instance types, Amazon EBS fast snapshot restore |
| Data protection and recovery | root volume deleted on terminate; encrypted snapshot fails to attach | review DeleteOnTermination and KMS permissions | Preserve data when an instance is terminated, Amazon EBS encryption |
| Access and permissions | volume will not attach across AZ | snapshot and restore to move across AZs | Attach a volume |
| Cost and billing | unexpected charges; billed size vs restore size | delete or snapshot unused volumes | View Amazon EBS snapshot information, Amazon EBS pricing |