Day 12 - EC2 Storage & Backup

Date: 2025-09-23 (Tuesday)
Status: “Done”

Lecture Notes

EC2 Storage & Security

Backup in EC2

  • AWS Backup provides centralized backup for AWS services including EC2.
  • EBS Snapshots back up EBS volumes:
    • Point-in-time backups
    • Incremental (stores only changed blocks)
    • Stored in S3 (not directly accessible)
  • AMI Backup captures the full EC2 configuration as an image.

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Snapshot Best Practices:

  • Schedule regular snapshots
  • Copy snapshots to other regions for DR
  • Tag snapshots for lifecycle management
  • Use Amazon Data Lifecycle Manager (DLM)

Key Pair

  • Key Pairs are used for secure authentication when connecting to EC2:
    • Public Key – stored on the instance
    • Private Key – kept by the user for SSH (Linux) or RDP (Windows)
  • Replaces passwords for better security.
  • Important: If you lose your private key, AWS cannot recover it.

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Key Pair Management:

  • Create key pairs in AWS or import your own
  • Store private keys securely
  • Use different key pairs for different environments
  • Rotate keys regularly

Elastic Block Store (EBS)

  • Amazon EBS provides persistent block storage for EC2 instances.
  • Volume types:
    • General Purpose SSD (gp2/gp3) – balance between performance & cost
    • Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1/io2) – for high IOPS workloads
    • Throughput Optimized HDD (st1) – for large, sequential data
    • Cold HDD (sc1) – low-cost, infrequently accessed data

Key Features

  • Attach/detach volumes from instances
  • Data persists when instances stop
  • Create snapshots for backup or cross-region copy
  • Automatically replicated within an AZ

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EBS Volume Comparison:

Type Use Case Max IOPS Max Throughput
gp3 General purpose 16,000 1,000 MB/s
io2 High performance 64,000 1,000 MB/s
st1 Big data 500 500 MB/s
sc1 Cold storage 250 250 MB/s