Benchmarking Elasticsearch with Magnetic EBS

In a detailed analysis, Roi Ravhon explores the cost-effectiveness and performance of using different Amazon EBS disk types for Elasticsearch clusters on AWS, comparing the new ST1 and SC1 magnetic disks with the GP2 disks under various instance configurations. Conducted with support from Amazon’s EBS team, the study utilized a custom benchmarking tool designed to simulate log indexing and Kibana searches, aiming to identify the optimal disk and instance pairings for log analysis workloads. The tests, focused on m4 instance types, revealed that SC1 disks, despite being the slowest, unexpectedly provided superior search performance, particularly under certain configurations, and highlighted the potential for significant cost savings without sacrificing performance. The findings challenge the conventional wisdom of relying solely on SSDs for Elasticsearch clusters, suggesting that EBS disks can offer a viable and cost-effective alternative, although further validation in a production environment is planned.

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