AWS EBS Elastic Volumes Deep Dive

© 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Darryl Osborne – Storage Specialist Solutions Architect
March 28th, 2017
Deep Dive on Amazon EBS
Elastic Volumes

A little EBS history…
• 2006 – EC2 launched with instance storage
• 2008 – EBS (Elastic Block Storage) launched on magnetic storage
• 2012 – EBS io1 (SSD) & EBS-Optimized instances
• 2014 – EBS gp2 (SSD)
• 2014 – EBS data volume encryption
• 2015 – Larger/faster EBS volumes
• 2015 – EBS boot volume encryption
• 2016 – EBS st1 (HDD) and sc1 (HDD)
• 2017 – EBS Elastic Volumes!

Throughput?
or
IOPS
Choosing an EBS volume type
What is more important to your workload:

Current EBS volume types
General Purpose
SSD
gp2
Provisioned IOPS
SSD
io1
Throughput Optimized
HDD
st1
Cold
HDD
sc1
SSD HDD

EBS volume types: I/O Provisioned
General Purpose
SSD
gp2
Throughput: 160 MiB/s
Latency: Single-digit ms
Capacity: 1 GiB to 16 TiB
Baseline: 3 IOPS per GiB up to 10,000
Burst: 3,000 IOPS (for volumes up to 1 TiB)
Great for boot volumes, low-latency applications, and bursty databases

Provisioned IOPS
SSD
io1
Baseline: 100 to 20,000 IOPS
Max ratio: 50:1 IOPS to size
Ideal for critical applications and databases with sustained IOPS

EBS volume types: Throughput Provisioned
Throughput
Optimized HDD
st1
Ideal for large-block, high-throughput sequential workloads
Baseline: 40 MiB/s per TiB up to 500 MiB/s
Burst: 250 MiB/s per TiB up to 500 MiB/s

Cold HDD
sc1
Ideal for sequential throughput workloads, such as logging and backup

Throughput
is more important
Small, random I/O Large, sequential I/O
Latency?
i2
gp2 io1 st1sc1
d2
Choosing an EBS volume type
IOPS
≤ 65,000> 65,000
< 1 ms Single-digit ms ≤ 1,250 MiB/s
Aggregate throughput?
> 1,250 MiB/s
is more important
≤ 10k IOPS > 10k IOPS
Throughput per volume
250 MiB/s 500 MiB/s
IOPS per volume

Definitions
Original volume
(end of the arrow)
Target volume
(tip of the arrow)

What are the new capabilities?

What are the new capabilities?
Increase volume size
Change volume type
Increase/decrease Provisioned IOPS

gp2
gp2
io1
io1
st1
st1
sc1
sc1

gp2
gp2
sc1
sc1
io1
io1
st1
st1

Change volume type
gp2io1 sc1st1
gp2 io1 sc1st1

Change volume type
gp2 io1sc1st1
gp2 io1 sc1st1

Change volume type
gp2 io1sc1 st1
gp2 io1 sc1st1

Increase/decrease Provisioned IOPS
io1
increase decrease

Combine different modifications
gp2
gp2
io1
io1
sc1
sc1
st1
st1

Considerations
Volume modifications must
be valid for the target
volume type

Considerations
volume type
example
400 GiB
st1
?
400 GiB
gp2

Throughput
Optimized HDD
st1
Ideal for large-block, high-throughput sequential workloads

Considerations
volume type
example
400 GiB
500 GiB
st1
gp2

Considerations
volume type
example
100 GiB
1,000 iops
?
100 GiB
10,000 iops
io1
io1

Provisioned IOPS SSD
io1
Baseline: 100 to 20,000 IOPS
Max ratio: 50:1 IOPS to size
Ideal for critical applications and databases with sustained IOPS

Considerations
volume type
example
100 GiB
1000 iops
200 GiB
10,000 iops
io1
io1

Considerations
Volume modifications must be valid for the target
volume type
• Minimum volume sizes
for each volume type
• Maximum volume sizes
gp2
io1 st1
sc1
1 GiB
4 GiB
500 GiB
500 GiB
16

Considerations
Volume modifications must be valid for the target
volume type
• Perf. characteristics for
each volume type
• Maximum ratio of
PIOPS to size for io1
volumes
gp2
io1 st1
sc1
Min 100 iops
Max 3K iops
Min 100 iops
Max 20K iops
Min 12 MiB/s /TiB
Max 192 MiB/s /TiB
Min 40 MiB/s /TiB
Max 500 MiB/s /TiB
50:1

Where can I use it?
Available in all public AWS regions
Current generation volumes
Current generation instances*
* Live volume modifications

Available in all public AWS regions
N. Virginia
Ohio
N. California
Oregon
Canada
São Paulo
Ireland
London
Frankfurt
Sydney
Tokyo
Seoul
Mumbai
Singapore
Beijing

Current generation volumes*
gp2 io1 st1 sc1
*Previous generation (Magnetic) volumes are not supported

Current generation instances*
General
purpose
Compute
optimized
C3
Storage and I/O
optimized
I3
P2
GPU
optimized
Memory
optimized
C4
M4
D2 X1
G2
R4
R3
I2M3
*Some previous generation instances do not support live modifications

Caveats
M3
Medium
= Live Volume Modifications

Caveats
M3 Instances other than Medium
M3
other than
Medium
= No Live Volume Modifications*
* After each volume modification you MUST stop/start the instance or
detach/attach the volume

Caveats
All other instances WITH
EBS volumes attached before 11/1/2016
All
EC2
= Live Volume Modifications*
* After a one-time instance stop/start or volume detach/attach

What tools do I use?
AWS Management Console
Command Line Interface (CLI)
Software Development Kits (SDKs)

Command Line Interface (CLI)
aws ec2 modify-volume
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
--volume-id <value>
[--size <value>]
[--volume-type <value>]
[--iops <value>]

Software Development Kits (SDKs)

What can I expect?
No performance impact
No downtime
No over-provisioning

During the modification
there is no performance
impact as a result of the
process
Your volume performance will be between the original and
target volume performance characteristics

Your volume performance
will be between the
original and target volume
performance
characteristics during
modification.
Original
Volume
Target
Volume
Performance

will be between the
performance
modification.
io1
gp2
1 TiB
1 TiB
example

will be between the
performance
modification.
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
1 TiB
20K iops
example

will be between the
performance
modification.
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
1 TiB
20K iops
example
Performance

will be between the
performance
modification.
10 TiB
10 TiB
example
st1
io1

will be between the
performance
modification.
20K iops
10 TiB
10 TiB
400 iops
example
st1
io1

will be between the
performance
modification.
320 MiB/s
20K iops
10 TiB
10 TiB
400 iops
400 MiB/s
example
st1
io1

will be between the
performance
modification.
320 MiB/s
20K iops
10 TiB
10 TiB
400 iops
400 MiB/s
example
Performance
st1
io1

How do I modify an EBS volume?

How do I modify an EBS volume?
Easy three step process
1. Modify
2. Monitor
3. Extend (only if increasing size)

Step 1: Modify
Using the EC2 Console

Step 1: Modify
Using the CLI
[--dry-run | --no-dry-run]
--volume-id <value>
[--size <value>]
[--volume-type <value>]
[--iops <value>]

Step 1: Modify
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
example
vol-05c33eec9820afc20

Step 1: Modify
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
5 TiB
20K iops
example

Step 1: Modify
--volume-id vol-05c33eec9820afc20
--size 5000
--volume-type io1
--iops 20000
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
5 TiB
20K iops
example

Step 1: Modify
--size 5000
--volume-type io1
--iops 20000
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
5 TiB
20K iops
example
Performance

Step 2: Monitor
Using EC2 Console

Step 2: Monitor
Using the CLI
aws ec2 describe-volumes-modifications
[--volume-ids <value>]
[--filters <value>]
[--next-token <value>]
[--max-results <value>]

Step 2: Monitor
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
5 TiB
20K iops
example
Performance

Step 2: Monitor
io1
gp2
3K iops
1 TiB
5 TiB
20K iops
example
Performance
{
"VolumesModifications": [
{
"TargetSize": 5000,
"TargetVolumeType": "io1",
"ModificationState": "optimizing",
"VolumeId": "vol-05c33eec9820afc20",
"TargetIops": 20000,
"StartTime": "2017-03-25T20:32:31.717Z",
"Progress": 99,
"OriginalVolumeType": "gp2",
"OriginalIops": 3000,
"OriginalSize": 1000
}
]
}

Step 2: Monitor
Using Amazon CloudWatch Events
event
(event-based)

Step 2: Monitor
event
(event-based)
Lambda
function

Step 2: Monitor
event
(event-based)
Lambda
function
Amazon SNS
notification

GitHub – Sample Code
awslabs/aws-elastic-volumes

Step 2: Monitor
Modified volume goes through different states:

Step 2: Monitor
Modified volume goes through different states:
Modifying
Optimizing
Completed

State 1: Modifying
Very short – usually just a few seconds
Received modification request
“ We’re working on it “

State 2: Optimizing
Majority of the time – minutes to hours
“ We’re still working on it “

State 2: Optimizing
Volume type modifications

State 2: Optimizing
Your volume performance will
be between the original and
target volume performance
modification.

State 2: Optimizing
Original
Volume
Target
Volume
Performance
modification.

State 2: Optimizing
Increase/decrease PIOPS
Original
Volume
Target
Volume
Performance
modification.

State 2: Optimizing
As soon as you enter the
‘Optimizing’ state, your volume
is the target size
Go to ’Step 3’ & extend the file
system in the OS gp2
gp2

State 3: Complete
Signals the modification is complete
“ We’re done “

Step 3: Extend (only if increasing size)
Using EC2 instance OS
Linux:
Determine the file system (if unsure)
[ec2-user ~]$ sudo file –s /dev/xvd*
/dev/xvda1: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data ...
/dev/xvdf: SGI XFS filesystem data ...

Linux:
Compare block device size to the file system disk usage
[ec2-user ~]$ lsblk
[ec2-user ~]$ df -h

Linux:
For ext2, ext3, ext4 file systems, use resize2fs
[ec2-user ~]$ sudo resize2fs device_name
For XFS file systems, use xfs_growfs
[ec2-user ~]$ sudo xfs_growfs –d mount_point

Windows:
Run diskmgmt.msc

Windows:
Right click the
expanded drive and
choose Extend
Volume.

Windows:
Enter the number of
MB to extend the
volume and
complete the wizard.

How often can I modify volumes?
Each volume can be
modified once every 6
hours
6hrs.

How often can I modify volumes?
Each volume can be
modified once every 6
hours
An error occurred (IncorrectState) when
calling the ModifyVolume operation:
You've reached the maximum modification
rate per volume limit. Wait at least 6
hours between modifications per EBS
volume.

Can I stop a volume modification once started?
A modify volume
command cannot be
stopped

Can I modify encrypted volumes?
Yes, modifying encrypted volumes is supported
You cannot change the
encryption state of a
volume with the modify
volume command

How much does it cost to modify a volume?
There is no cost for modifying the volume
You start to be charged for the
new volume specifications when
you issue the modify-volume
API call

What about permissions?
Modifying a volume’s type and PIOPS can dramatically
impact performance
We recommend you lockdown
permissions to the modify-
volume API like you would the
delete-volume API

Modify Volume Timeline
gp2
io1

gp2
io1
Modify-volume API

gp2
io1
Modify-volume API Modifying State
(seconds)

gp2
io1
Optimizing State
(seconds)
(performance between both volumes)
Target size available
(expand file system)

gp2
io1
Completed State
Optimizing State
(seconds)
(performance between both volumes)
Target size available
(expand file system)

Test: Load During Modify Volume
Unmodified Volume:
Volume: New 100GiB gp2 volume
File System: ext4
Instance: m4.2xlarge
Load: fio 50/50 read/write to 10x 8GiB files
Modified Volume:
Volume: New 100GiB gp2 volume
File System: ext4
Instance: m4.2xlarge
Load: fio 50/50 read/write to 10x 8GiB files
Test: While the fio script was running, we modified the volume size to 200GiB

Questions:
1) Which is the unmodified?
2) Which is the modified?

Infor
Infor provides business applications specialized by industry and built for
the cloud, with more than 65 million cloud users.
“We’re excited about the announcement of
the Elastic Volumes feature for Amazon
Elastic Block Store and are looking forward to
the flexibility it offers to easily right-size
systems,” said Jim Plourde, Vice President,
Infor Cloud Services. “The feature makes it
easy to move some of our colder data to sc1
to provide substantial savings on storage
costs.”

Acquia
"Elastic volumes make it possible to quickly and efficiently
scale EBS volumes for our services in an automated fashion
while avoiding mistakes and dataloss. This will enabled us to
maintain service uptime, reduce operational maintenance and
lower unused data costs while seamlessly scaling our
volumes on-demand as needed. “

HipChat
HipChat has a 45+ node elastic search
cluster, with 1TB 6k IOPS io1 volumes.
These were overprovisioned and they
were undertaking an effort to to scale
down to 3K IOPS/volume.
Benefit: With Elastic Volumes, HipChat was able to save 4-6 weeks of
engineering effort, yet still realized the benefit of a reduction in IOPS
spend. This cost reduction was achieved with next to no engineering
overhead, and no impact to customers.

Reference
Amazon EBS Resources - https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/developer-resources/
Amazon EBS Web page - https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/
YouTube AWS Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazonWebServices
Reference Architecture - https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/
qwikLABS - https://aws.qwiklabs.com/

Thank You!
https://aws.amazon.com/summits/
Darryl Osborne
darrylo@amazon.com
Q&A

AWS EBS Elastic Volumes Deep Dive

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