All storage Pricing
S3 Pricings
Absolutely, Pavan! Here's the updated S3 storage class comparison table including:
Real-world use cases
Analogies with traditional disk/storage types (e.g., HDD, floppy, tape)
All previously requested details: pricing, retention, access time, etc.
📊 Amazon S3 Storage Classes – Deep Dive Comparison Table
Storage Class
Approx Cost (/GB/month)
Why Cheaper
Real-World Use Case
Traditional Storage Analogy
Min. Retention
Access Time
Availability
Durability
S3 Standard
$0.023
Premium performance
Hosting web app images, static websites
SSD – Fast & reliable
None
Milliseconds
99.99%
11 9s
S3 Intelligent-Tiering
$0.023 (Frequent tier) + monitoring fee
Moves cold data to cheaper tiers
SaaS logs/data where access pattern is unpredictable
Smart hybrid drive (auto tiering)
30 days (IA) / 90 days (Archive)
Millisec to hours
99.9–99.99%
11 9s
S3 Standard-IA
$0.0125
Lower availability, retrieval fee
Monthly access reports, backup of DB snapshots
External HDD – slower, cheaper
30 days
Milliseconds
99.9%
11 9s
S3 One Zone-IA
$0.01
Single AZ, no redundancy
Re-creatable ML datasets, internal build artifacts
Cheap external HDD (no backup)
30 days
Milliseconds
99.5%
11 9s (single AZ)
S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
$0.004
Archive + instant access
Financial reports needed occasionally but urgently
High-latency magnetic disk
90 days
Milliseconds
99.9%
11 9s
S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
$0.0036
Slow retrieval, cold storage
Archived logs, compliance backups (yearly audits)
Optical disc (CD/DVD)
90 days
Minutes to hours
99.99%
11 9s
S3 Glacier Deep Archive
$0.00099
Cheapest, slowest
Legal/compliance storage for 7–10 years (e.g., tax docs)
Magnetic Tape / Floppy
180 days
Up to 12 hours
99.99%
11 9s
💡 Analogy Key
SSD
High-speed, low latency (S3 Standard)
Hybrid Drive
Smart tiering (S3 Intelligent-Tiering)
HDD
Low-cost, moderate access (IA classes)
CD/DVD
Slow access, infrequent use (Glacier Flexible)
Magnetic Tape
Ultra low-cost, archival only (Deep Archive)
Floppy
Obsolete, coldest storage — comparable to Deep Archive for analogy
🛠 Example Use Cases in Real Projects
S3 Standard: Hosting React frontend for a dashboard, with fast image and JS loading
Intelligent-Tiering: Event logs or metrics stored over months, where access patterns change
Standard-IA: Monthly report exports or Terraform state backups
One Zone-IA: Dev team caches for test data (easily regeneratable)
Glacier Instant: IRS audit reports accessed once per year but need fast availability
Glacier Flexible: Banking sector storing historical transactions for 7 years
Deep Archive: Legal compliance or old CCTV footage for investigations
Would you like this in PDF or markdown format for documentation, client proposals, or internal training?
SSD
HDD
DVD
Magnetic tape
Floppy disk
EBS Pricing
Absolutely, Pavan! Here's a detailed comparison table for all EBS (Elastic Block Store) volume types similar to the S3 table. This includes:
Pricing (approximate per GB/month)
Why it’s cheaper / performance factors
Real-world use cases
Traditional disk analogies (SSD/HDD etc.)
Retention, IOPS, throughput
Access patterns & availability
📊 Amazon EBS Volume Types Comparison Table
Volume Type
Approx Cost (/GB/month)
Why Cheaper / Expensive
Real-World Use Case
Disk Analogy
Min Size
IOPS (per volume)
Throughput (MB/s)
Latency
Durability
gp3 (General Purpose SSD)
$0.08
Balanced price/performance, baseline IOPS included
Web servers, DBs, containers
Modern SSD
1 GiB
3,000 (default), up to 16,000
Up to 1,000
Low
99.8–99.9%
gp2 (General Purpose SSD)
$0.10
Older generation, performance tied to size
Legacy workloads still on gp2
Older SSD
1 GiB
3 IOPS/GB, up to 16,000
Up to 250
Low
99.8–99.9%
io2 (Provisioned IOPS SSD)
$0.125 + $0.065/IOPS
High durability & consistent latency
Mission-critical DBs (Oracle, SQL)
Enterprise SSD
4 GiB
Up to 64,000 (Nitro)
Up to 1,000
Very low
99.999%
io2 Block Express
~$0.125 + IOPS cost
Ultra-high perf, sub-ms latency, SAN-level
Large SAP HANA, high-I/O DBs
NVMe SAN / PCIe SSD
4 GiB
Up to 256,000
Up to 4,000
Ultra-low
99.999%
st1 (Throughput Optimized HDD)
$0.045
Optimized for throughput, not IOPS
Big data, streaming logs
High-RPM HDD (7200rpm)
125 GiB
Up to 500
Up to 500
Medium
99.8–99.9%
sc1 (Cold HDD)
$0.015
Lowest cost, cold data, low throughput
Backup, infrequent access
Slow HDD / Archival Disk
125 GiB
Up to 250
Up to 250
High
99.8–99.9%
EBS Snapshots (Standard)
$0.05 (per GB/month)
Incremental backup, stored in S3
Backup of any EBS volume
Backup image
N/A
N/A
N/A
Slow restore
11 9s (S3)
EBS Snapshots (Archive)
$0.0125
Long-term archival snapshots
Compliance & rarely needed restores
Tape backup
90 days
N/A
Restore takes ~72h
Very high
11 9s (S3)
💡 Analogy Key
Volume Type
Analogy
gp3 / gp2
Standard SSD
io2 / io2 Block Express
High-end SSD / NVMe
st1
High-RPM HDD (Seagate 7200)
sc1
Old school spinning HDD
Snapshots
Disk Image / Backup
Snapshot Archive
Tape Drive
🛠 Real-World Use Case Examples
Web apps, small DBs
gp3
Legacy EBS users (pre-2020)
gp2
Oracle/PostgreSQL with consistent 10k+ IOPS
io2
SAP HANA, high-throughput workloads
io2 Block Express
Big data pipeline, Splunk storage
st1
Cold logs, archival, infrequent access
sc1
Daily backup automation
EBS Snapshot (Standard)
Long-term retention backups
Snapshot Archive
📌 Notes:
gp3 is now the recommended general-purpose EBS type, more cost-effective than gp2 with separate IOPS/throughput configuration.
io2 Block Express is available only on Nitro-enabled EC2 instances.
Snapshots are regionally resilient and not tied to any AZ.
Snapshots can be used to create new volumes or AMIs.
Would you like this as a PDF, Excel, or Markdown file to use in documentation, course slides, or client demos?
Why we use EBS not EFS or S3 in ec2 instance
Great question, Pavan! Here’s a clear breakdown of why we use Amazon EBS instead of EFS or S3 with EC2—based on performance, use case, and architecture needs.
🧠 Short Answer:
EBS is a block-level storage, designed for high-performance, low-latency disk-like access.
If your EC2 needs a “hard drive” for OS, databases, or fast file access, use EBS.
📊 EBS vs EFS vs S3 (for EC2)
Feature
EBS (Block Storage)
EFS (File Storage)
S3 (Object Storage)
Use case
Boot volumes, DBs, apps needing disk
Shared access, app configs, user dirs
Static files, backups, media, logs
Mount
One EC2 at a time (unless multi-Attach)
Multiple EC2s (multi-AZ)
Not mountable like a drive
Latency
Low (milliseconds)
Low to medium (NFS overhead)
High (HTTP-based, not block)
IOPS
High (configurable, predictable)
Moderate (burstable)
Low (designed for throughput)
Protocol
Block device (/dev/xvda)
NFSv4
HTTP / HTTPS API
Data structure
Blocks (like a disk)
Files / directories
Objects (key-value)
Pricing model
Per GB + IOPS
Per GB + throughput + access time
Per GB + API calls
Durability
High (backed by snapshots)
High
11 9s durability
🔍 When to Use EBS Over Others
✅ Use EBS when:
You’re running databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB)
EC2 needs a boot/root volume
You require fast, consistent IOPS (e.g., io2)
Your app writes frequent changes to disk
You want point-in-time snapshots and volume backups
🚫 Don’t use EFS/S3 if:
You need fast disk access or boot volumes — EFS is NFS, adds latency
You need random I/O — S3 is not a filesystem, no
ls,cat, etc.You need high IOPS with minimal overhead
💡 Real-life Analogies
EBS
Laptop's SSD
OS, MySQL, containers, logs
EFS
Shared network drive
App configs, multi-user environments
S3
Cloud Google Drive
Store assets, backup files, large datasets
🧵 Example Use Cases:
EC2 with Ubuntu and PostgreSQL
EBS
App with shared media folder between EC2s
EFS
Store images uploaded by users
S3
Run AI model that logs intermediate files fast
EBS gp3
Periodic data dumps from EC2
S3 with aws cp
Let me know if you want a diagram to visualize how EC2 connects to EBS, EFS, and S3 – or if you want this as a blog post or client explanation!
EFS Pricing
Absolutely, Pavan! Here's a detailed comparison table for Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)—similar to the ones we did for S3 and EBS.
📊 Amazon EFS Storage Classes Comparison Table
Storage Class
Cost (/GB/month)
Why It's Cheaper or Expensive
Real-World Use Case
Disk Analogy
Performance Mode
Throughput
Latency
Access Type
Durability & Availability
EFS Standard
~$0.30
Primary, high availability, immediate access
Shared web content, config files, ML training data
Network File Server
General Purpose / Max I/O
Burstable or provisioned
Low (ms)
Multi-AZ, multi-EC2
99.99% avail, high durability
EFS Infrequent Access (IA)
~$0.025
Lower cost for infrequent access, higher latency
Archived configs, older logs, rarely used assets
Cold shared storage
Same as Standard
Lower (slower access speed)
Medium (100ms+)
Same as Standard
99.99% avail, high durability
🧠 Why Use EFS with EC2 (vs EBS or S3)?
Feature
EFS
EBS
S3
Type
Network file system (POSIX)
Block storage
Object storage
Mount to EC2
Multiple EC2s
One EC2 per volume
Cannot mount
Access
Concurrent, shared
Single host (unless multi-attach)
Programmatic API only
Use Case
Shared user directories, CMS
Databases, boot volumes
Static files, backups
Elasticity
Auto-scale with usage
Must resize manually
Unlimited
💡 Real-Life Use Cases for EFS
WordPress uploads shared across EC2s
EFS Standard
Network drive
Configuration files for Kubernetes pods
EFS Standard
NFS mounted config
Machine learning training data
EFS Standard
Shared fast access
Archive of old log files
EFS Infrequent Access
Cold shared storage
Home directories for multiple users
EFS Standard
UNIX home folders
📦 EFS Performance Modes
Mode
Best For
Max Throughput
Comment
General Purpose (default)
Low-latency workloads (web servers, home dirs)
Burstable / ~100 MB/s
Best for most apps
Max I/O
Highly parallel apps (big data, ML)
Higher (scales with clients)
Slightly higher latency per file operation
🔐 Availability & Access
Highly Available: Multi-AZ replication
POSIX-compliant: Supports standard Linux file ops (
chmod,ls,mv)Access via: NFSv4 from EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS
Encryption: In transit and at rest
🧵 Real-Time Example (DevOps):
You're managing a fleet of EC2 instances running containerized apps:
Store all container logs or config mounts in EFS.
ML models write intermediate checkpoints to shared EFS.
Older logs auto-tiered to EFS IA to save cost.
🧊 Smart Cost Optimization: Lifecycle Management
You can enable lifecycle policies to:
Automatically move files not accessed for X days (e.g., 30 days) to EFS-IA
Reduces storage cost from
$0.30 → $0.025per GB/month
Would you like a diagram to compare EBS, EFS, and S3 visually for your EC2 training content or YouTube video? Or a downloadable table/cheatsheet for client documentation?
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