EBS Volume Types

~10 min read

SSD versus HDD-backed volumes, and matching a volume type to a workload's IOPS and throughput profile.

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Key points

  • gp3: modern general-purpose default, independently configurable IOPS/throughput
  • io1/io2: highest-performance, most consistent latency, for demanding production databases
  • io1/io2 support EBS Multi-Attach with a cluster-aware file system
  • st1/sc1: HDD-backed, cheap, for large sequential-access workloads — not for boot volumes or random access