Which is faster for read access on EC2; local drive or EBS?

Posted by Phillip Oldham on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Phillip Oldham
Published on 2010-02-10T16:45:23Z Indexed on 2010/04/14 11:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 352

Filed under:

amazon-ec2

|

amazon-ebs

|

amazon-web-services

|

zfs

|

Performance

Which is faster for read access on an EC2 instance; the "local" drive or an attached EBS volume?

I have some data that needs to be persisted so have placed this on an EBS volume. I'm using OpenSolaris, so this volume has been attached as a ZFS pool. However, I have a large chunk of EC2 disk space that's going to go unused, so I'm considering re-purposing this as a ZFS cache volume but I don't want to do this if the disk access is going to be slower than that of the EBS volume as it would potentially have a detrimental effect.

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about amazon-ec2

Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 35c / hour, compared with 85c / hour for an on-demand instance, I was… >>> More
Amazon EC2 spot instances - is there a catch ?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I needed to start a new EC2 instance today and decided to try out the new spot instances, where you can reduce your instance cost by bidding on the maximum per-hour price you're prepared to pay. Since today's spot price was only 3.5c / hour, compared with 8.5c / hour for an on-demand instance, I… >>> More
Amazon EC2 master node hanging

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi, I am using cloudera setup to launch a cluster with hadoop on Amazon. Sometimes, the master hadoop node hangs and we have to restart the job from the job. Did anyone face similar problem and resolve the issue. Thank you. >>> More
Can't Connect to IIS Ftp Site under Amazon EC2

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
IIS 7.5: Ftp Firewall Suport: Data Ranges 49152-65535 using external Ip of Amazon EC2 static IP Ftp IPv4 Restriction: allow: Amazon EC2 static IP Ftp Authentication: Anonymous: Enabled, Basic: Disabled, IISMgr: Enabled Ftp Authorization: Allow All Users: Read/Write Windows Firewall (Inbound): Open… >>> More
Amazon EC2 EBS volume scheduled backup/snapshots using puppet

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am not a Linux admin, although I wish I was, and I have seen these questions Amazon EC2 Backup Strategy Amazon EC2 + EBS:: Regular backup plan? Simple Backup Strategy for Amazon EC2 instances / volumes? And this suggestion http://alestic.com/2009/09/ec2-consistent-snapshot I tried using… >>> More

Related posts about amazon-ebs

Amazon EBS root volume persistence

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
When I launch a new Windows EC2 instance I am given a 30 gig root EBS volume. I'm trying to make sure I understand the EBS terminology and want to make sure I understand this correctly: Q: What happens to my data when a system terminates? The data stored on a local instance store will… >>> More
Amazon EBS for web site files

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I'm new to the Amazon EC2/EBS system. I'm trying to figure out the "best practice" for hosting a web application (php, ASP.NET, etc.). The way I see it, I have 2 options: Have the instance hold my web files - Don't need to worry about attaching volume's etc.? Have EBS volume hold my web files… >>> More
Using Amazon's EBS for MySQL hot backup

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What are your experiences using Amazons EBS snapshot features for MySql hot backups. I have a database running a batch processing job in ec2. I backup with EBS snapshot. So far the backups looks consistent. But I am afraid they "will stop being consistent as soon as I stop checking" (Uncertainty… >>> More
Automating Amazon EBS snapshots anyone have a good script or solution for this on linux

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'd expect this to be fairly routine, but cannot find a simple approach for creating an managing EBS snapshots automatically. Was hoping there'd be a shceduler in the AWS console.. alas not yet. Would appreciate any suggestions as to how best to do this on from Ubuntu. Thanks >>> More
best practice? Consumer data in MySQL on Amazon EBS (Elastic block store)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
This is a consumer app, so I will care about storage costs - I don't want to have 5x copies of data lying about. The app shards very well, so I can use MySQL and not have scaling issues. Amazon EBS has a nice baseline+snapshot backup capability that uses S3. This should have a light footprint (in… >>> More