Instance Store Volumes

  • An instance store provides temporary block-level storage for your instance. This storage is located on disks that are physically attached to the host computer.

  • Instance store is ideal for temporary storage of information that changes frequently, such as buffers, caches, scratch data, and other temporary content, or for data that is replicated across a fleet of instances, such as a load-balanced pool of web servers.

  • An instance store consists of one or more instance store volumes exposed as block devices.

  • The size of an instance store as well as the number of devices available varies by instance type.

  • The virtual devices for instance store volumes are ephemeral[0-23]. Instance types that support one instance store volume have ephemeral0.

  • Instance types that support two instance store volumes have ephemeral0 and ephemeral1, and so on.

Choosing Between the EC2 Instance Store and EBS

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