Ec2 Storage Options

Instance Store: temporary data. Deleted on Stop, Hibernate or terminate.
EBS Volumes: Persistent Storage

EBS Volumes

Note

EBS is Block level storage
S3 is object level storage

EBS can be used as a hard drive but it persists independently of the EC2 Instance. Moreover they are flexible enough that we can increase size and modify them while the instance is live.

Hint

Use as primary storage for data that requires frequent updates.
Also good for fast throughput with constant disk scans

You can attach multiple volumes to the same instance, however the instances and volumes must share the same Availability Zones (see: Regions and AZs)
Depending on the volume and instance types we can Multi Attach and use the same volume for different instances running at the same time.

Multi Attach only works with IOPS SSD and require Nitro Based instances.

It has to main options:
General Purpose SSD: Standard workloads
Provisioned IOPs: High IO throughput with low-latency

EBS Encryption uses KMS Keys with the AES-256 Encryption algorithm

The encryption happens on the instance level not directly on the volume.

Best Practices

Use different EBS Volumes for the OS and the Data.
Ensure that the Data volume persists after termination
Use instance store only for temporary data.

Make Regular Backups of your EBS volumes using EBS Snapshots, and create a custom AMI instance to store your configuration.

Links to EC2