In recent years, anyone with large storage requirements has likely considered the cloud. Cloud storage is not as simple as we would like. Each AWS storage service offers its own unique features and pitfalls, while reducing costs.
It can be overwhelming to try to navigate all the options. We’ll show you the best use cases for each AWS storage service so your eyes don’t glaze over.
Amazon Glacier
The cloud offers many benefits, including the ease of retrieval and low cost. Amazon Glacier is the best storage option, at $4 per month for 1TB.
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Start trainingGlacier restorations usually take place at a crawl. This is why it’s not recommended for data that needs to be quickly recovered. Glacier can be expensive to restore large amounts of data. It is best to use Glacier only for off-site archives that you won’t need to retrieve. Glacier is a great option for low volumes of restoration, as Glacier provides 10GB free of charge.
Glacier can be accessed through a variety of client applications. Many of these are free and open-source, such as FastGlacier. Glacier is one of the easiest cloud backup services to set up.
Uses that are best:
Off-site backups that will rarely (if ever!) need to be restored
Compliance archives
Backups of developer repositories
Backups of the user home directory
Elastic Block Store (EBS).
EBS is the primary storage of EC2 instances. EBS is a block storage that behaves like a hard disk. It can be formatted to any file system that is needed for the instance.
EBS can further be divided into price/performance categories. It can reside on either expensive solid-state drives (best suited for high IOPS) and affordable hard disks (optimized to transfer high MB/s data). You can take quick snapshots of servers or disk images from the AWS management console.
Best Uses
Application files and operating system for EC2 instances
Configurations for raids
High-volume databases
Situations that require a lot of operations per second
EBS has a downside. Partitions are pre-defined and don’t automatically scale. This means you need to provision and pay storage that you aren’t actually using. You can quickly run out storage space without careful monitoring, which can cause your applications to stop.
Elastic File System (EFS).
EFS is a NFS-based file system that allows content management worldwide. Although it is the most expensive AWS storage option available, it also offers the most flexible connectivity options.
EFS can connect to multiple EC2 server simultaneously as well as to your local servers via AWS Direct Connect. Multiple web servers and applications can access the same files, eliminating storage redundancy.
Scalability is another area where Elastic File System excels. EFS automatically scales according to your storage needs, so you won’t have to pay for storage you don’t use. EFS may be the best option for data stores that expand and contract frequently.
Uses that are best:
Multiple distributed web servers are used to create e-commerce websites.
Distributed web servers for high-traffic global content management systems.
Data analytics servers require on-demand storage.
Software development environments and repositories
Global organizations that require shared access to files
Simple Storage Service (S3)
S3 is the leader in AWS storage on-demand. S3 is the best option if you need quick access to your data and need to store it as cheaply possible. It’s a popular choice because of this.