Questions 19 to 21

Explanations for questions 19 to 21

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Question 19

The disk configuration for an Amazon EC2 instance must be finalized. The instance will be running an application that requires heavy read/write IOPS. A single volume is required that is 500 GiB in size and needs to support 20,000 IOPS.

What EBS volume type should be selected?

  1. EBS General Purpose SSD
  2. EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD
  3. EBS General Purpose SSD in a RAID 1 configuration
  4. EBS Throughput Optimized HDD

Correct Answer: 2

Explanation: This is simply about understanding the performance characteristics of the different EBS volume types. The only EBS volume type that supports over 16,000 IOPS per volume is Provisioned IOPS SSD.

SSD, General Purpose — gp2

  • Volume size 1 GiB — 16 TiB
  • Max IOPS/volume 16,000

SSD, Provisioned IOPS — i01

  • Volume size 4 GiB — 16 TiB
  • Max IOPS/volume 64,000

HDD, Throughput Optimized — (st1)

  • Volume size 500 GiB — 16 TiB
  • Throughput is measured in MB/s and includes the ability to burst up to 250 MB/s per TB, with a baseline throughput of 40 MB/s per TB and a maximum throughput of 500 MB/s per volume.

HDD, Cold — (sc1)

  • Volume size 500 GiB — 16 TiB
  • Lowest cost storage — cannot be a boot volume.
  • These volumes can burst up to 80 MB/s per TB, with a baseline throughput of 12 MB/s per TB and a maximum throughput of 250 MB/s per volume.

HDD, Magnetic — Standard

  • Cheap, infrequently accessed storage — lowest-cost storage that can be a boot volume

INCORRECT: “EBS General Purpose SSD” is incorrect as the max IOPS is 16,000.

CORRECT: “EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD” is the correct answer.

INCORRECT: “EBS General Purpose SSD in a RAID 1 configuration” is incorrect. RAID 1 is mirroring and does not increase the amount of IOPS you can generate.

INCORRECT: “EBS Throughput Optimized HDD” is incorrect as this type of disk does not support the IOPS requirement.

References:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-volume-types.html

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