AWS (Amazon Web Services) Certification Practice Exam

What type of storage is attached to EC2 instances to provide persistent data storage?

1. EBS Volumes

2. Ephemeral Storage

3. Object Storage

4. Local Disk Storage

The correct answer is: EBS Volumes

EBS Volumes, or Elastic Block Store Volumes, are specifically designed to provide persistent block-level storage for EC2 instances. They are highly durable, meaning that the data stored on them remains intact even when the EC2 instance is stopped or terminated, unlike ephemeral storage which is temporary and loses data when the instance is stopped or terminated. EBS Volumes can be easily attached or detached from instances, allowing flexibility in data management and providing the ability to resize or create snapshots for backup purposes. This makes them ideal for applications that require reliable, long-term storage of data, such as databases or enterprise applications. In contrast, ephemeral storage, often referred to as instance store, is temporary and is tied directly to the lifecycle of the EC2 instance. When the instance is stopped or terminated, any data stored in ephemeral storage is lost. While local disk storage may refer to physical drives on a server in some contexts, in AWS terms, it usually aligns more with ephemeral storage characteristics. Object storage is generally associated with services like Amazon S3, which is used for storing unstructured data and is not directly attached to EC2 instances in the same way that EBS is. Therefore, EBS Volumes are the correct choice when it comes to providing persistent