Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) vs. DDN SFA NVMe Storage (DDN SFA200X2/SFA400X2)

EBS is well-suited for use as a storage option for databases, including relational databases, NoSQL databases, and big data analytics databases. EBS can provide high IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) and low latency. EBS provides a high-availability storage solution, which ensures that your data is always available and accessible even in case of a single or multiple availability zone failures. EBS can also be replicated across multiple availability zones to ensure data durability. The scenario where I find it less appropriate is in terms of cost; EBS can be more expensive than other storage options, such as Amazon S3, especially for large amounts of data or for infrequently accessed data.

Incentivized

• Raw storage capacity attached to your instance operative system
• Frequent data rewriting (mission critical for reporting)
• Low latency connectivity (14 reporting subsidiaries in different time zones)
• Videly spreaded for implementation
• Fast accessible drive
• Block storage are core for Java, Net mobile applications

Incentivized

• EBS volume can be attached to only one EC2 instance at a time
• The volumes are limited to the Availability zones of the instance they are attached to
• The maximum size is 64TB. We have had usecases where we needed larger volume
• The backup snapshots are stored on S3 and that's an additional cost.

Incentivized

Amazon EBS is a great tool and fairly easy to use as long as you are familiar with the Amazon Web Service ecosystem. It allows a great way for you to move storage around easily and allows you to quickly provision storage as needed based on the business requirement. For us, it's easy to move between our EC2 images that had been linked with EBS storage between these Amazon accounts.

The support for Amazon Elastic Block Store is great as long as you can articulate your needs. Like most tools, there may be some back and forth before you find a support person that is knowledgable in the tool and can provide you with necessary insights.

Volumes range from cost-effective dollar-per-GB to high performance with the fastest IOPS and throughput. You can change volume types, tune performance, or increase volume size without disrupting your critical applications. EBS volumes are replicated within an Availability Zone (AZ) and can easily scale to petabytes of data. Build your SAN in the cloud for I/O-intensive applications. Run relational or NoSQL databases.

Incentivized

• In terms of ROI, I found it's really cost-effective since maintenance cost is not there. No need to spend extra money on the procurement of hard drives
• On demand feature of Ebs is quite effective when you require extra storage you can allocate and pay as per your need.
• Accessibility from everywhere and deployment of it across different geographical location.

Incentivized