What are the benefits of EBS vs. instance-store?

  • EBS backed instances can be set so that they cannot be (accidentally) terminated through the API.
  • EBS backed instances can be stopped when you're not using them and resumed when you need them again (like pausing a Virtual PC), at least with my usage patterns saving much more money than I spend on a few dozen GB of EBS storage.
  • EBS backed instances don't lose their instance storage when they crash (not a requirement for all users, but makes recovery much faster)
  • You can dynamically resize EBS instance storage.
  • You can transfer the EBS instance storage to a brand new instance (useful if the hardware at Amazon you were running on gets flaky or dies, which does happen from time to time)
  • It is faster to launch an EBS backed instance because the image does not have to be fetched from S3.

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