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SAA-C03 Practice Question 27: EBS Throughput Volume Type

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03) · Test 3 · question 7 of 10

Storage Architectureeasy

A log-analytics job on a single EC2 instance reads a 14 TiB data set from start to finish several times a day. The reads are large and sequential, and the job needs roughly 450 MiB/s of sustained throughput from its data volume. Random I/O performance does not matter, and the operating system is on a separate root volume.

Which EBS volume type meets the throughput requirement at the lowest cost?

Select one answer
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Answer:

  • A. Throughput Optimized HDD (st1)

HDD-backed EBS volumes are designed for large streaming workloads, where throughput rather than IOPS is what matters. st1 is described as low-cost magnetic storage for frequently accessed, throughput-intensive workloads, and log processing is one of its listed use cases. An st1 volume delivers up to 500 MiB/s, and its baseline throughput reaches that cap at 12.5 TiB. A 14 TiB volume can therefore sustain the 450 MiB/s the job needs, even across several full scans a day. HDD volumes can't be boot volumes, but this is a data volume.

Option B is the cheaper HDD, but it is too slow. sc1 is capped at 250 MiB/s per volume. It is designed for infrequently accessed data, not data scanned several times a day.

Option C would meet the throughput easily, since gp3 goes up to 2,000 MiB/s. But it is SSD storage priced for transactional, IOPS-driven workloads, which this job doesn't have. Paying for 14 TiB of SSD fails the lowest-cost requirement.

Option D is built for workloads that need sustained IOPS and sub-millisecond latency, such as large databases. It is the most expensive type here and buys nothing a sequential scan can use.

References: Amazon EBS volume types; Amazon EBS Throughput Optimized HDD and Cold HDD volumes

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