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Amazon EC2 provides flexible, cost-effective, and easy-to-use storage solutions for your compute instances. Each option offers a unique combination of performance, durability, and cost. You can mix and match these storage types to meet your application’s requirements. Common EC2 storage options:
  • Instance Store
  • Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
  • Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

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1. Instance Store

Instance Store volumes are temporary, high-performance disks physically attached to the host server. They deliver very low-latency I/O but are ephemeral.
Data on an Instance Store is lost if the instance stops, hibernates, or terminates. Use it only for non-persistent workloads.
Key characteristics:
  • Ephemeral storage tied to instance lifecycle
  • Ideal for scratch data, buffers, and caches
  • Automatic deletion on stop/terminate (reboot retains data)
Use cases:
  • Temporary caches (e.g., in-memory databases, processing buffers)
  • Scratch disks for big data workloads
  • High-speed swap or buffer space

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2. Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic NFS file system that can be mounted concurrently by multiple EC2 instances across Availability Zones.
EFS scales automatically—you pay only for the storage you consume.
Features:
  • Elastic capacity: grows and shrinks as you add or remove files
  • Shared access: mount the same file system on multiple instances
  • Fully managed: AWS handles provisioning, patching, and maintenance
  • Supports NFSv4.1 and NFSv4.2 protocols
Common commands: 
# Create an EFS file system
aws efs create-file-system --performance-mode generalPurpose

# Mount on Linux instance
sudo yum install -y amazon-efs-utils
sudo mkdir /mnt/efs
sudo mount -t efs fs-0123456789abcdef0:/ /mnt/efs
Use cases:
  • Web serving and content management
  • Shared development or build environments
  • Data science, analytics, and media workflows

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3. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

Amazon EBS offers persistent, block-level storage that you can attach to a single EC2 instance at a time. Volumes behave like raw block devices you can format, mount, and use as you would an on-premises disk.
Volume TypeUse CaseThroughput/IOPS
General Purpose SSDBalanced price/performance (web servers, apps)Up to 16,000 IOPS (gp3)
Provisioned IOPS SSDI/O-intensive databases (Oracle, SQL Server)Up to 256,000 IOPS
Throughput Optimized HDDLarge, sequential workloads (big data, logs)Up to 500 MB/s
Cold HDDInfrequently accessed data (archival, backups)Up to 250 MB/s
Core features:
  • Data Persistence: volumes persist independently of the EC2 instance
  • High Availability: data is replicated within the same AZ to prevent hardware failures
  • Encryption: AES-256 at rest and in transit (managed with AWS KMS)
  • Snapshots: create point-in-time backups stored in Amazon S3
  • Dynamically adjustable: modify size, volume type, and IOPS without detaching
Sample commands: 
# Create a 100 GiB gp3 volume in us-east-1a
aws ec2 create-volume \
  --availability-zone us-east-1a \
  --size 100 \
  --volume-type gp3

# Attach the volume to an instance
aws ec2 attach-volume \
  --volume-id vol-0123456789abcdef0 \
  --instance-id i-0abcdef1234567890 \
  --device /dev/xvdf
The image is a diagram comparing Amazon EC2 storage options, including Amazon EFS, EC2 Instance Storage, and Amazon EBS, highlighting their features and connections.

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Storage Comparison at a Glance

FeatureInstance StoreEBSEFS
PersistenceEphemeralPersistent (AZ-level replica)Persistent (region-wide)
PerformanceVery high IOPSHigh IOPS / throughputScalable throughput
ProtocolDirect-attached diskiSCSI block deviceNFSv4
Shared AccessNoSingle instance per volumeMultiple instances concurrently
Best forScratch, cachesDatabases, boot volumesShared file storage, home directories

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