Key points

• EBS volumes reside in one AZ and commonly attach to EC2; snapshots provide durable backup/copy mechanisms.
• SSD families fit random latency-sensitive I/O; HDD families fit eligible large sequential throughput.
• Size capacity and performance together, encrypt volumes/snapshots, and design application/data HA beyond one volume.

Best-known use cases

• Provide boot or data volumes for EC2.
• Run databases or filesystems on EC2 that require block devices.

What candidates often confuse it with

• EBS is block storage; S3 is object and EFS/FSx are managed file systems.
• EBS persists independently from an instance; instance store is temporary host-attached storage.

Key takeaway

Choose EBS for EC2-attached block semantics, then match volume family and topology to I/O and failure requirements.

Related services

• Amazon EC2
• Amazon S3
• Amazon EFS
• AWS Backup

Relevant exam tasks

• D2.1
• D3.1
• D4.1

Learn more

• Amazon EBS