Examining the different storage platforms and their characteristics is crucial when preparing to become an AWS Certified Data Engineer. These platforms vary in performance, durability, cost, and many other factors, making it essential for data engineers to understand the best storage platform for any given task.
AWS Major Storage Platforms
To begin with, there are three major storage platforms provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Amazon Elastic File System (EFS). These storage platforms serve different purposes, and their characteristics vary accordingly.
1. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3):
Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. This means customers of all sizes and industries can use it to store and protect any amount of data for a range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive, enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics.
Key Characteristics of S3:
- Can store unlimited data with max 5TB file size
- Good for storing and retrieving any type of data over the internet
- Requires region selection while creating the S3 bucket
- Provides 99.999999999% (eleven 9s) of durability and 99.99% availability.
2. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS):
Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes and attach them to EC2 instances. Once attached, you can create a file system on top of these volumes, run a database, or use them in any other way you would use a block device.
Key Characteristics of EBS:
- Allows you to create storage volumes with size ranging between 1GB and 16TB
- Ideal for workloads that require low latency access to their data
- Can be attached to any running EC2 instance in the same availability zone
- Provides 99.99% availability and 99.999% durability.
3. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS):
Amazon EFS provides a simple, scalable, elastic file system for Linux-based workloads for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. It is built to scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files.
Key Characteristics of EFS:
- Easy to use and provides a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly
- Good for applications that require shared access to file-based storage
- Supports the Network File System version 4 (NFSv4) protocol
- Offers 99.999999999% (eleven 9s) durability and between 99.9% to 99.99% availability, depending on the class of storage used.
A Comparative Overview of the Three Storage Platforms
| Storage Platform | Best for | Durability | Availability | Max Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | Object-based storage and retrieval | 99.999999999% | 99.99% | Unlimited |
| Amazon EBS | Block storage for EC2 instances | 99.999% | 99.99% | 16 TB |
| Amazon EFS | File storage for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premise resources | 99.999999999% | Between 99.9% to 99.99% | Unlimited |
It is crucial for an AWS Certified Data Engineer to be proficient with these platforms and select the appropriate storage service based on workload requirements, whether it’s for a big data analytics solution, a web application, or simply for data backup and archiving purposes. Understanding their differences and strengths allows for the optimization of data storage, accessibility, efficiency and cost.
Practice Test
True or false: Amazon S3 is a block storage service.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Amazon S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, and performance.
Which of the following are characteristics of Amazon EBS? (Multi select)
- a. It provides replicated storage
- b. It is an ephemeral storage
- c. It’s performance can be optimized
- d. It is perfect for Time Series Database, Big Data analytics engines
Answer: a, c, d
Explanation: Amazon EBS provides durable, block-level storage that can be attached to Amazon EC2 instances and is not ephemeral. EBS performance can be optimized and it is great for tasks such as Time Series Database and Big Data analytics engines.
Which of the following are characteristics of Amazon Glacier? (Single select)
- a. Hot storage
- b. Cold storage
- c. Immediate data access
- d. Low-cost storage
Answer: b, d
Explanation: Amazon Glacier is a cold storage solution, where data is not immediately available and is mostly used for archiving purposes. It is a low-cost storage service.
True or false: S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access storage class is designed for data that is accessed infrequently.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access class is designed for data that is not frequently accessed, offering a lower-cost storage tier.
True or false: Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Amazon RDS is a fully managed relational database service that automates tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.
Which of the following are characteristics of Amazon DynamoDB? (Multi select)
- a. It is a NoSQL database
- b. It supports document and key-value data structures
- c. It supports SQL queries
- d. It is scalable without downtime.
Answer: a, b, d
Explanation: Amazon DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that supports both document and key-value data structure and can scale without downtime. However, it does not support SQL queries.
True or false: Ephemeral storage persists independently from the life of an instance.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Ephemeral storage does not persist independently from the life of an instance. It provides temporary block-level storage for the instance.
Which type of storage is S3 designed for? (Single select)
- a. File storage
- b. Object storage
- c. Block storage
- d. Database storage
Answer: b
Explanation: S3 is designed for object storage which manage data as objects, and each object includes the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier.
True or false: Amazon Redshift is an object storage service.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Amazon Redshift is not an object storage service, it’s a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service.
Which of the following are characteristics of Amazon EMR? (Multi select)
- a. It is a cloud-based big data platform
- b. It supports Spark, Hadoop, Hive, Pig, HBase and other open-source big data frameworks
- c. It is a storage service
- d. It is an ephemeral storage
Answer: a, b
Explanation: Amazon EMR is a cloud big data platform that supports Spark, Hadoop, Hive, Pig, HBase and other open source big data frameworks. It is not a storage service or an ephemeral storage.
Interview Questions
What is Amazon S3 used for in AWS?
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is used in AWS as an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance.
What is the main benefit of using Amazon Glacier in terms of storage use cases?
The main benefit of using Amazon Glacier is its suitability for data archiving and long-term backup due to its cost-effectiveness for data that is infrequently accessed, and where retrieval times of several hours are acceptable.
What AWS service provides a virtual file system with the capability to scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications?
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a simple, scalable, and fully managed elastic NFS file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.
What is the functionality of AWS Snowball service?
AWS Snowball is a data migration tool that helps to transfer terabytes or petabytes of data into and out of AWS services. It is used when there is not enough bandwidth to transfer large amounts of data over the internet.
What does the term “durability” mean in the context of AWS storage platforms?
Durability is the measure of the likelihood that an object or piece of data will not be lost over a given period of time. In AWS, storage systems like S3 have high durability, meaning that they are designed to provide 99.999999999% durability of objects over a given year.
In AWS, how would a Data Engineer ensure that an Amazon EBS volume persists beyond the life of the instance?
They would do this by selecting the “Delete on Termination” option to ‘false’ when launching the instance.
What is the Amazon Athena service primarily used for in AWS?
Amazon Athena is used for querying data stored in Amazon S3, using standard SQL syntax. It is a serverless service and does not need any infrastructure.
What is the purpose of Amazon EBS snapshots and where are these snapshots stored?
Amazon EBS snapshots are used to create point-in-time backups of EBS volumes. These snapshots are stored in Amazon S3 and can be used for disaster recovery, migration, and compliance.
What is the difference between Amazon EFS and Amazon EBS?
Amazon EFS is a file-level storage service suitable for use with multiple concurrent EC2 instances, while Amazon EBS is a block-level storage service designed to be used with a single EC2 instance.
What type of storage service is Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)?
Amazon EBS is a block-level storage service designed for use with Amazon EC2 for both throughput and transaction-intensive workloads at any scale.
What AWS service would be most suitable for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web?
Amazon S3 would be the most suitable for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web.
What is the primary use case for AWS Storage Gateway?
The primary use case for AWS Storage Gateway is for hybrid cloud storage, integrating on-premises environments with cloud storage for backup, archiving, cloud bursting, storage tiering, and disaster recovery.
How does Amazon RDS benefit the application developers?
Amazon RDS benefits application developers by managing time-consuming database administration tasks. This frees developers to focus on the application design and functionality.
How can one enhance the performance of Amazon EBS?
Performance of Amazon EBS can be enhanced by using provisioned IOPS to reserve IO capacity, EBS optimization to dedicate network capacity, and by using RAID arrays.
What AWS service provides secure, durable, and scalable storage for data backup, archival, and disaster recovery?
Amazon S3 Glacier provides secure, durable, and scalable storage for data backup, archival, and disaster recovery.
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