EC2 Instance Store: High-Performance Ephemeral Storage

In this lesson, we explored EC2 Instance Store, a type of high-performance, temporary storage that is physically attached to the underlying hardware of an EC2 instance. Here’s a structured breakdown of its benefits, limitations, and best use cases.

1. What is EC2 Instance Store?

• Instance Store is a hardware disk that is directly connected to the physical host running an EC2 instance.
• It provides high-speed disk performance compared to traditional EBS (Elastic Block Store).
• Unlike EBS, which is persistent, Instance Store is ephemeral—data is lost if the instance stops or is terminated.

2. Key Benefits of EC2 Instance Store

✅ Extreme I/O Performance

• Instance Store delivers much higher throughput than EBS.
• Example: Some I3 instance types support 3.3 million read IOPS and 1.4 million write IOPS, while an EBS gp2 volume maxes out at 32,000 IOPS.

✅ Low-Latency Storage

• Because the storage is physically attached to the EC2 host, read/write operations are faster and more consistent.

✅ Ideal for Temporary Data

• Suitable for workloads that need temporary, high-speed storage but don’t require data persistence.

3. Limitations of EC2 Instance Store

❌ Data is Lost if Instance Stops or Terminates

• Since the storage is physically tied to the EC2 host, stopping or terminating the instance erases all data.