AWS Cloud Practitioner Certification: Storage

Amazon EC2 instance store

• It’s not a standalone block storage → block-level storage that is physically attached to the EC2 instance host computer.

• The data is lost when an instance is stopped or terminated. (No data persistence concept)

• Use case:
  • Temporary operations.
  • Temporary memory like buffers, caches, and scratch data.

• Benefits
  • Automatically available storage
  • Cost effective
  • High performance: extremely low-latency → high I/O performance ideal for fast processing.

Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS)

• Block Storage outside of a EC2 instance. (data persistence concept)

• Enables the creation of snapshot backups to prevent data loss.

• You can manage the creation, retention, and deletion of EBS snapshots using Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager.

• Use cases:
  • Database hosting
  • Backup storage for apps
  • Rapid deployment of development environments using volume snapshots.

• Benefits
  • Portability: It isn’t attach to a EC2 instance.
  • Data migration: You can easily migrate the data to different AZs using the snapshots.
  • Disaster recovery
  • Cost optimization: You can adjust the size of the data to match actual usage patterns without downtime.
  • Performance tuning: EBS offers various volume types to match different workload requirements and IOPS needs.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

• Store and retrieve an unlimited amount of data.

• Object storage type.

• Store objects in S3 buckets.
  • Objects ⇒ the file.
  • S3 buckets ⇒ the directory.

• Maximum object size of 5 TB

• Fully managed.

• Offers 99.999… percent durability. (highly protected against loss).

• Offers lifecycle management, versioning, and various storage classes.

• Benefits
  • Virtually unlimited storage.
  • Object lifecycle management. (S3 Lifecycle)
    • Automate two actions
      • Transition actions: when objects should transition to another storage class.
      • Expiration actions: when objects expire and should be permanently deleted.

• Use cases
  • Content distribution
  • Hosting static websites.
  • Delivering media files.
  • App data storage.
  • Archiving.
  • Data lakes.
  • Compliance-driven data retention. (Data must retained due to enterprise standards, laws, etc…)

S3 Tiers

• S3 Standard
  • General purpose use.
  • Default option.

• S3 Intelligent-Tiering
  • Useful when data has unknown or changing access patterns.
  • Stores objects in 3 tiers:
    • Frequent access tier. (frequently access)
    • Infrequent access tier. (unfrequently access)
    • Archive instant access tier. (archiving data and access require time)
  • The data is moved among the 3 tier based on frequency of access.

• S3 Standard Infrequent Access (Standard IA)
  • Infrequent data but requires rapid access when needed.
  • High throughput compared with S3 Standard.
  • Low latency compared with S3 Standard.
  • Low per-GiB storage price
  • Low per-GiB retrieval fee.
  • Use case:
    • Store long-term backups.
    • Disaster recovery files.
    • Others.

• S3 One Zone Infrequent Access (One Zone-IA)
  • Store data in a single AZ.
  • Reduced cost compared with S3 Standard IA, which use 3 AZs.
  • Use cases
    • Customers need infrequent access without high availability.
    • Storing secondary backups.

• S3 Express One Zone
  • Store data in a single AZ.
  • Designed to deliver very fast access for your most frequently accessed data.
  • Up to 10x faster than S3 Standard.
  • Requests cost up to 80% lower than S3 Standard
  • Use cases:
    • Latency-sensitive apps.

• S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
  • Used for archiving data + fast retrieval.
  • Cost saving up to 68% compared with S3 Standard IA archive tier.
  • Same latency and throughput performance than S3 Standard IA.

• S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
  • Low-cost storage for archived data accessed 1-2 times per year.
  • Data retrieval can be done in 1-5 minutes.
  • You can request bulk retrieval in up to 5-12 hours without additional costs.
  • Use cases
    • Backups
    • Disaster recovery
    • Some data occasionally must be retrieved in minutes.

• S3 Glacier Deep Archive
  • Lowest-cost of all S3 storage classes.
  • Support long-term retention.
  • Default retrieval time of 12 hours.
  • Designed to retain datasets for 7-10 years or longer.
  • Use cases
    • Financial services
    • Healthcare
    • Public sector
    • Any industry with highly compliance requirements.

S3 Outposts

• Delivers object storage to your on-premises AWS Outposts environment.

• Use Amazon S3 APIs and features.

• Helps maintain optimal performance.

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

• Fully managed

• Used for hybrid approach (on-premise + AWS cloud services)

• Use Linux Network File System (NFS) protocol.

• Automatically scale to petabytes as you add or remove files without disrupting apps.

• Can be access by multiple EC2 instances, apps, users, etc.

• Benefits
  • Multi-AZ redundancy
  • Shared access
  • Elastic (flexible, grow and shrink,..) storage
  • Offers EFS data lifecycle management.
    • You can move data between storage classes on usage pattern.
    • You can create lifecycle policies.

Amazon EFS storage classes

• Standard storage classes
  • EFS Standard
  • EFS Standard Infrequent Access (Standard IA)

• One zone storage classes
  • EFS One Zone
  • EFS One Zone-IA

• Archive storage classes
  • EFS Archive

Lifecycle policies

• Standard to IA ⇒ data with 30 days without access.

• IA to Archive ⇒ data with 90 days without access.

• IA/Archive to Standard ⇒ You need to set a policy to this transition. By default, files are not moved back to Standard storage.

Amazon FSx

• EFS focus on NFS → FSx works with many file system protocols
  • Windows File Server
  • OpenZFS
  • NetAPP ONTAP

• Benefits
  • File system integration
  • Manage infrastructure
  • Scalable storage
  • Cost effective

Additional storage services

AWS Storage Gateway

• It’s the gap between traditional infrastructure and the cloud

• So, it’s a hybrid cloud storage service.

• Benefits
  • Seamless integration.
  • Improved data management.
  • Local caching: Keeps frequently accessed data for quick access while less used data in the cloud.
  • Cost optimization

• Gateway types
  • Amazon S3 File Gateway.
    • Keep working with local files while the actual data is securely stored in the AWS Cloud.
  • Volume Gateway
    • Create virtual storage while keep local access to your data.
    • The cloud data is presenting as iSCSI volumes.
    • Two types:
      • Cached volume mode: Primary data → Cloud, Most frequent → Local
      • Stored volume mode: complete dataset → local, backup as EBS snapshots → cloud
  • Tape Gateway

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery

• Replicates critical workloads to AWS with minimal downtime.

• Your servers’ block-level data is continuously replicated to AWS.

• Benefit
  • Business resilience
  • Streamlined disaster recovery
  • Cost optimization (eliminate secondary data centers)

• Use cases
  • Healthcare data protection
  • Financial services continuity
  • Manufacturing operations recovery

EBS vs S3