Detecting AWS EBS performance issues with Datadog

AWS Elastic Block Storage (EBS) offers a storage service backed by network block storage, essential for traditional database systems. However, EBS can cause performance issues due to its reliance on the network, which is shared with other customers. To detect these issues, track the CloudWatch metric "VolumeQueueLength" in Datadog, comparing it across EBS volumes attached to slow applications. A sustained increase above 1 or provisioned IOPS/100 indicates maxing out the throughput of that volume. Resolving EBS performance issues involves selecting the right storage and instance types, priming EBS volumes, using Instance Store volumes, purchasing Provisioned IOPS, and replacing degraded volumes if needed.