EBS vs NVMe: Don’t Use EBS for Cloud Native Services

Emily Dunenfeld's article explores the comparative advantages of NVMe SSDs over Elastic Block Store (EBS) as storage solutions for cloud-native services on Amazon EC2 instances, emphasizing the cost and performance benefits of NVMe despite its ephemeral nature. NVMe SSDs offer high-speed, low-latency access, making them suitable for performance-critical tasks like databases and caching, but they lack the persistent storage capability of EBS, which retains data even when instances are stopped. The key challenge with NVMe's temporary storage can be mitigated through data replication strategies, ensuring data durability and availability. While NVMe can significantly reduce costs compared to EBS, it requires specialized engineering efforts to implement replication for persistent storage. The article highlights use cases for both storage solutions, suggesting that cloud-native services can utilize NVMe's speed and cost-effectiveness, while traditional applications may still benefit from EBS's durability.