Compute host running analytics
Remember EBS
Full name: Amazon Elastic Block Store
Memory aid: Elastic Blocks are Stored as volumes.
Volume scope, attachment options, and durability features depend on the selected type and configuration.
Study area: Cloud & virtualization · Batch 9
Relevant study for: CompTIA Cloud+ · Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 · ISC2 CCSP · AWS Cloud Practitioner CLF-C02 · Azure Administrator AZ-104 · Azure Solutions Architect AZ-305
Practice with exam flashcards →Cloud / Knowledge library
Amazon EBS
Provides persistent block volumes and snapshots for EC2 workloads
Why learn Amazon EBS?
Teams use Amazon EBS to adopt virtual block storage without building the complete underlying platform themselves.
The problem it solves
Provides persistent block devices for virtual machines and stateful workloads
Where it came from
Amazon EBS is Amazon Web Services's offering for virtual block storage. Its closest catalog counterparts are Azure Managed Disks and Google Persistent Disk; they address the same broad need but are not feature-for-feature identical.
Build your understanding
Work through these exercises in order. Try the task before opening a reference.
- Explain the main responsibility of Amazon EBS.
- Choose a workload that fits Amazon EBS.
- Identify one operational tradeoff of Amazon EBS.
- Compare Amazon EBS with Azure Managed Disks.
- Compare Amazon EBS with Google Persistent Disk.
Documentation and sources
- AWS cloud services catalog (aws.amazon.com)
Connect the ideas
Alternatives
Real World Example
Persistent Storage for Regional Inventory Analytics
A regional logistics firm managing high-frequency inventory tracking databases that require consistent block-level storage performance.
The business problem
The firm faces data loss risks during instance termination because their current ephemeral storage is wiped when the virtual machine shuts down, preventing long-term state retention for their analytics engine.
How this topic solves it
Amazon EBS provides persistent block-level storage volumes that remain independent of the lifecycle of an EC2 instance, allowing the firm to detach and reattach volumes to different instances as needed to maintain data continuity.
- Provision an Amazon EBS volume in the same Availability Zone as the target EC2 instance.
- Attach the EBS volume to the EC2 instance using the AWS Management Console or CLI.
- Format the volume with a file system like ext4 or XFS within the operating system.
- Mount the volume to a specific directory to begin writing persistent data.
- Create periodic snapshots of the volume to ensure point-in-time recovery capability.
Shows the relationship between compute resources and persistent storage
Persistent block storage
Point-in-time backup
- EC2 Instance → 1:1 attachment → EBS Volume
- EBS Volume → 1:N backup → Snapshot
Expected business outcome
The firm achieves reliable data persistence where inventory records survive instance restarts or failures, ensuring that analytics workloads can resume immediately without manual data restoration.
Limitations and checks
An EBS volume is restricted to a single Availability Zone, meaning it cannot be attached to instances in different zones simultaneously; this is verified by checking the volume's availability zone attribute in the AWS console.