Re: Using AWS ephemeral SSD storage for production database workload?

> On Jan 29, 2018, at 8:05 PM, Sam Gendler <sgendler(at)ideasculptor(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Why not use EBS storage, but don’t use provisioned iops SSDs (io1) for the ebs volume. Just use the default storage type (gp2) and live with the 3000 IOPS peak for 30 minutes that that allows. You’d be amazed at just how much I/o can be handled within the default IOPS allowance, though bear in mind that you accrue iops credits at a rate that is proportional to storage amount once you’ve started to eat into your quota, so the performance of someone using general-purpose SSDs (gp2) with 2 terabytes of storage will be different than someone using 100GB of storage. But I recently moved several databases to gp2 storage and saved a ton of money doing so (we were paying for 5000 IOPS and using 5 AT PEAK other than brief bursts to a couple hundred when backing up and restoring). I’ve done numerous backups and restores on those hosts since then and have had no trouble keeping up and have never come close to the 3k theoretical max, even briefly. Replication doesn’t appear to be bothered, either.

One reason would be that gp2 volumes cap out at 160MB/s. We have a bunch of databases on gp2 (it works great) but that throughput cap can bite you if you’re not expecting it.