Storage Services Overview
AWS offers different storage types for different needs: block storage (EBS) for EC2 instances, object storage (S3) for files and media, and file storage (EFS) for shared access across instances.
Comparing Storage Services Video
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Comparison
| Feature | Amazon EBS | Amazon S3 | Amazon EFS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage type | Block storage | Object storage | File storage (NFS) |
| Access | Single EC2 instance | Web/API access | Multiple EC2 instances |
| Max size | 16 TiB per volume | 5 TB per object | Petabytes (auto-scales) |
| Strength | Low-latency performance | High durability (11 nines) | Shared access, elastic |
| Modification | Can modify in place | Must re-upload | Can modify in place |
When to Use Each
- EBS: Databases, boot volumes, applications needing fast read/write on a single instance
- S3: Static files, backups, media storage, data lakes, web content
- EFS: Shared file systems, content management, web serving across multiple instances
