AWS Study Guide: Chapter 4 – Cloud Storage

AWS SAA-C03 Study Guide

Chapter 4: Cloud Storage Solutions

Visual Overview: The Three Pillars

BLOCK STORAGE

Amazon EBS

Virtual Hard Drive
Uniform blocks
Low Latency

Best for: Databases & Boot Volumes

FILE STORAGE

Amazon EFS / FSx

Shared Filing Cabinet
Hierarchical
Network Accessible

Best for: Collaboration & Shared Apps

OBJECT STORAGE

Amazon S3

Scalable Warehouse
Flat structure
Metadata-driven

Best for: Media, Backups & Data Lakes

1. Block Storage Deep Dive (Amazon EBS)

EBS provides persistent block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances. Unlike Instance Stores, EBS data persists independently of the instance lifecycle.

EBS vs. Instance Store

Feature	Elastic Block Store (EBS)	Instance Store
Persistence	Persistent (Data remains after stop/reboot)	Ephemeral (Data lost on termination)
Attachment	Network-attached (Flexible)	Physically attached to host (Low Latency)
Use Case	Production Databases, Boot Volumes	Temporary buffers, Cache, Scratch data

Volume Types

SSD (gp2/gp3): General purpose, balances price and performance.
Provisioned IOPS (io1/io2): High-performance for mission-critical apps (HPC, Real-time analytics).
HDD (st1/sc1): Throughput-optimized or Cold storage for large, infrequent datasets.

2. File Storage (EFS & FSx)

Amazon EFS

Linux Native

The “Scale-up Superhero.”
Supports NFS protocol.
Automatically scales up/down.
Shared storage for thousands of EC2s.

Amazon FSx

Windows / Lustre / NetApp

The “Performance Powerhouse.”
FSx for Windows File Server (SMB).
FSx for Lustre (High-performance computing).
Specific protocol compatibility.

3. Object Storage (Amazon S3)

Amazon S3 is a highly durable, scalable warehouse for unstructured data. It is the “King of Cost-Effectiveness.”

S3 Storage Classes

Class	Best For…	Retrieval Time
S3 Standard	Frequently accessed data	Milliseconds
S3 Standard-IA	Infrequently accessed (Backups)	Milliseconds
S3 Glacier Instant	Seldom used, but need fast access	Milliseconds
S3 Glacier Flexible	Archives	Minutes to Hours
S3 Glacier Deep Archive	Long-term compliance (7-10 years)	12 – 48 Hours

Architect’s Note: Use S3 Lifecycle Management to automate data movement between these classes to save costs. Use S3 Versioning to protect against accidental deletions.

4. Hybrid & Migration Solutions

The Snow Family

Snowcone: Compact, 8TB, for edge locations.
Snowball: High-speed transfer appliance (Petabyte scale).
Snowmobile: A literal truck for Exabyte-scale migration.

Storage Gateway

Bridges on-premises data centers to AWS S3.

File Gateway: Local cache for S3 files.
Volume Gateway: Cloud-backed iSCSI block storage.
Tape Gateway: Virtual Tape Library (VTL) for archives.

5. Cost Optimization & Backup

AWS Backup: Centralized management for EBS, EFS, and S3.
Right-sizing: Don’t over-provision EBS; start small and expand.
Intelligent-Tiering: Let AWS move S3 objects based on access patterns automatically.