EBS gp2 vs. gp3: Why Making the Switch is the Easiest Performance Win of the Year

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances. Choosing the right EBS volume type is crucial for your application’s performance and your budget. For a long time, gp2 was the go-to general-purpose SSD volume. However, AWS has introduced gp3, its successor, and making the switch could be the easiest way to boost your application’s speed and potentially save money.

Let’s break down the differences in simple terms:

What are gp2 and gp3?

Both gp2 and gp3 are general-purpose SSD volume types designed for a wide variety of transactional workloads, including boot volumes, databases, and development and test environments. They aim to provide a balance of price and performance.

The Key Differences:

The main differences lie in how performance is handled and priced:

• IOPS and Throughput:
  • gp2: Performance is tied to the volume size. You get 3 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) per GiB of volume size, up to a maximum of 16,000 IOPS. Throughput also scales with size, up to 250 MiB/s. This means you might need to provision a larger volume than you need for storage just to get the required performance.
  • gp3: Decouples performance from storage capacity. You get a baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s of throughput regardless of the volume size. You can then independently provision higher IOPS (up to 16,000) and throughput (up to 1,000 MiB/s) for an additional cost.
• Cost:
  • gp2: You are charged per GiB of provisioned storage per month. The cost includes the baseline performance tied to the size.
  • gp3: Has a lower price per GiB of storage compared to gp2. You pay separately for any IOPS and throughput you provision above the baseline.

Why Switch to gp3? The Benefits:

1. Potential Cost Savings: If your workload requires a lot of IOPS but not a lot of storage, you likely had to over-provision your gp2 volume. With gp3, you can provision the exact storage you need and then dial in the required IOPS and throughput. This can lead to significant cost reductions.
2. More Predictable Performance: gp3 allows you to explicitly define the IOPS and throughput your volume needs. This provides more consistent and predictable performance for your applications, especially for smaller volume sizes that might have been bottlenecked by the gp2 scaling.
3. Greater Flexibility: You have more granular control over your storage performance. You can easily adjust IOPS and throughput as your application needs change without having to resize your volume.
4. Higher Maximum Performance: For applications that demand very high throughput (up to 1,000 MiB/s), gp3 offers a significant upgrade over the gp2 limit of 250 MiB/s, even on large gp2 volumes.

Who Should Consider Switching?

• Workloads needing high IOPS but less storage: Databases, transactional applications.
• Applications experiencing performance bottlenecks on smaller gp2 volumes.
• Users looking to optimize their EBS costs.
• Applications that could benefit from higher throughput than gp2 offers.

Making the Switch: It’s Easier Than You Think!

Migrating from gp2 to gp3 is generally a straightforward process. You can typically do this without detaching your EBS volume or stopping your EC2 instance using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs.

Steps to Switch:

1. Identify your gp2 volumes: Review your EC2 instances and their attached EBS volumes in the AWS Management Console.
2. Assess your performance needs: Monitor the IOPS and throughput utilization of your gp2 volumes using CloudWatch metrics. This will help you determine the appropriate IOPS and throughput to provision for your gp3 volume.
3. Modify the volume: In the AWS Management Console or using the AWS CLI/SDK, select the gp2 volume you want to migrate and modify its type to gp3. You’ll be prompted to specify the desired IOPS and throughput.
4. Monitor performance: After the modification, monitor your application’s performance and the CloudWatch metrics for the gp3 volume to ensure it’s meeting your requirements. You can adjust the provisioned IOPS and throughput if needed.

In Conclusion:

Switching from gp2 to gp3 is a low-effort change that can bring significant benefits in terms of cost optimization, performance predictability, and flexibility. By decoupling performance from storage size, gp3 empowers you to right-size your EBS volumes and pay only for the performance you truly need. If you’re still using gp2 volumes, now is the perfect time to evaluate your workloads and make the switch – it could be the easiest performance win of your year!