Amazon Elastic Block Store

Amazon Elastic Block Store
Name	Amazon Elastic Block Store
Developer	Amazon Web Services
Released	August 2006
Operating system	Cross-platform
Genre	Block-level storage
License	Proprietary

Amazon Elastic Block Store. It is a persistent block-level storage service designed for use with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances. The service provides raw storage volumes that can be attached to running EC2 instances, functioning similarly to a physical hard drive. These volumes are highly available and reliable, automatically replicating within their designated Availability Zone to protect against component failure.

Overview

Launched by Amazon Web Services in 2006, this storage service became a foundational component of the AWS cloud infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with other core services like Amazon EC2 and Amazon Relational Database Service, providing the durable storage layer for a vast array of workloads. The architecture allows storage volumes to persist independently from the life cycle of any single virtual machine, enabling data durability across instance terminations. This design is critical for enterprise applications migrating from traditional data center environments to the cloud.

Features

Key capabilities include the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of volumes, which are then stored redundantly in Amazon Simple Storage Service. These snapshots can be used to create new volumes or for data backup and disaster recovery strategies. The service also supports data encryption at rest using AWS Key Management Service managed keys and offers consistent, low-latency performance. For high-performance applications, it provides IOPS-optimized volume types capable of supporting tens of thousands of I/O operations per second.

Volume types

The service offers several volume types optimized for different performance profiles and cost considerations. SSD-backed volumes are categorized into General-purpose and Provisioned IOPS types, designed for transactional workloads such as databases and boot volumes. HDD-backed volumes come in Throughput Optimized and Cold variants, which are cost-effective for big data, data warehouses, and log processing. Each type allows customers to balance performance requirements with the pricing model of AWS.

Use cases

Primary applications include serving as boot volumes or primary storage for operating systems like Linux or Microsoft Windows Server running on EC2. It is extensively used for enterprise database workloads, including those running on Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, and open-source systems like MySQL and PostgreSQL. The service is also fundamental for running big data analytics engines such as Apache Hadoop or Amazon EMR, and for hosting containerized applications orchestrated by Amazon Elastic Container Service or Kubernetes.

Pricing

Costs are primarily based on the amount of provisioned storage per month, the type of volume selected, and the number of IOPS or throughput provisioned. Additional charges apply for snapshots stored in Amazon S3 and for data transfer between Availability Zones. AWS offers pricing models that include On-Demand rates and discounted Reserved Instance commitments for predictable workloads. Detailed pricing is published on the official Amazon Web Services website.

Security

Data security is enforced through integration with AWS Identity and Access Management for access control and AWS Key Management Service for encryption key management. All data in transit between an EC2 instance and a volume is encrypted. Volumes can be encrypted at rest, with keys managed by KMS, ensuring compliance with standards like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR. Network security is maintained within the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud framework, allowing granular control via security groups and network access control lists.

Category:Amazon Web Services Category:Cloud storage Category:2006 software