Summary and Quiz

In this lesson, we’ll summarize what we have learned about Storage. Also, we'll test our knowledge through a quiz.

Summary

Here is a summary of key takeaways from the storage section:

• Types of storage: There are three most common types of storage

  • Object storage: Object storage allows us to dump any type of data in a container-like structure. The container has a flat structure that allows us to fetch objects through unique URLs. It is ideal for storing large amounts of unstructured data.

  • Block storage: Block storage manages data in fixed-sized blocks like hard disks. It is commonly used as a dedicated storage device in Virtual Machines (VM) with a high I/O rate.

  • File storage: File storage is a type of data storage that organizes and stores data in a hierarchical structure using directories and files.

• S3 buckets: It is an object storage service offered by AWS. The name of each bucket is globally unique, which allows us to access it through a unique URL. It offers features to facilitate storage, such as versioning, replication, logging, and static website hosting.

• Elastic Block Store (EBS): AWS offers a block storage service. There are four main types of EBS volumes:

  • General-purpose SSD volumes: These are SDD volumes commonly used for general-purpose testing and development. It includes gp2 and gp3 volumes, ideal for general-purpose use cases.

  • Provisioned IOPS volumes: These are SDD volumes optimized for IOPS. It provides three options: io1, io2, io2 block express.

  • Throughput-optimized HDD volumes: These are throughput-optimized HDD volumes commonly used for large-size, sequential workloads.

  • Cold HDD volumes: These HDD-based volumes are ideal for long-term data retention at a low cost.

• EBS Snapshots: These allow us to back up the data stored in EBS volumes. Snapshots are incremental and are stored in S3 buckets.

• Elastic File System (EFS): It is a file storage service offered by AWS. EFS can connect to multiple compute instances simultaneously through mount targets.

• EFS file system types: Given below are the main types of EFS instances:

  • Regional file system: This type of file system can connect to multiple compute resources deployed across an availability zone.

  • One Zone file systems: These are located in a single zone and can only have one mount target in the zone. They are highly available within the specified zone.

• EFS storage classes: EFS offers three types of storage classes tailored to the user’s requirements:

  • EFS standard: EFS standard has a sub-millisecond latency and is ideal for frequent read-and-write operations

  • EFS infrequent access (IA): EFS infrequent access is used for data accessed once a quarter of a year.

  • EFS archive: The EFS archive is used for data accessed once a year.