Highly Available EC2 Instances and Volumes | Ideal Configurations for Performance-Sensitive Workloads

Ideal Configurations for EC2 Instances for Performance-Sensitive Workloads

Question

Your company is planning to set up a performance-sensitive workload in AWS.

You need to set up the EC2 Instances for hosting this workload, and the EC2 volumes should be highly available.

Which of the following are some of the ideal configurations that you should look for when setting up the EC2 Instance? Choose 2 answers from the options given below.

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

Correct Answers: A and C.

The AWS Documentation mentions the following.

Any performance-sensitive workloads that require minimal variability and dedicated Amazon EC2 to Amazon EBS traffic, such as production databases or business applications, should use volumes attached to an EBS-optimized instance or an instance with 10 Gigabit network connectivity.

EC2 instances that do not meet this criterion offer no guarantee of network resources.

The only way to ensure sustained reliable network bandwidth between your EC2 instance and your EBS volumes is to launch the EC2 instance as EBS-optimized or choose an instance type with 10 Gigabit network connectivity.

Option B is incorrect.

The question requires that the volumes are highly available.

Instance Store provides temporary block-level storage for the instances.

So, this storage type is not suitable.

Option D is incorrect since this is used for archive storage for EC2 Instances.

For more information on AWS EBS configuration, please visit the following URL-

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-ec2-config.html

When setting up EC2 Instances for a performance-sensitive workload in AWS, the following are ideal configurations to consider:

A. Ensure to choose an EBS Optimized Instance: EBS Optimized Instances have been specifically designed to deliver consistent performance for EBS volumes by minimizing contention between Amazon EBS I/O and other traffic on the same instance. These instances provide dedicated network throughput between Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon EBS volumes and allow optimized communication between EC2 instances and EBS volumes, leading to higher I/O performance. Therefore, it is recommended to choose an EBS Optimized Instance to ensure that the EC2 volumes are highly available and can handle high traffic volumes.

C. Ensure to choose an Instance type with 10 Gigabit network connectivity: An instance type with 10 Gigabit network connectivity provides a high network throughput capacity that enables communication between instances and also ensures that the instances can handle high traffic volumes. This network capacity can help to enhance the performance of the workload, particularly when the workload involves large data transfers or network-intensive tasks.

B. Ensure to choose an Instance store Instance type: An Instance store Instance type can provide high I/O performance and low-latency local storage. However, the storage on these instances is temporary, and data is lost when the instance is stopped or terminated. Therefore, it is not an ideal configuration for a workload that requires high data durability and persistence.

D. Ensure to use Cold HDD volumes: Cold HDD volumes are designed for infrequently accessed data that is accessed less than once per month. Therefore, they may not be ideal for a performance-sensitive workload that requires high I/O performance and low-latency storage.

In summary, to set up EC2 Instances for a performance-sensitive workload in AWS, it is recommended to choose an EBS Optimized Instance and an instance type with 10 Gigabit network connectivity to ensure that the EC2 volumes are highly available and can handle high traffic volumes.