GP2 Vs PIOPS | How to Choose Type of AWS EBS Volume

How To Calculate IOPS Consumed by EBS Volume

How to Choose Type of AWS EBS Volume

Save Cost using GP2 Volumes Instead of Provisioned IO Volume

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Aim:

• Understanding GP2 volume 
• Understanding IO1 Volume 
• Which one is cost and performance effective 
• How much IOPS do you need? 
• Which one to choose, GP2 or IO1

Understanding GP2:

• Cost effective (Explained below) 
• Range in size from 1 GiB to 16 TiB 
• Max throughput - 160 MB/s 
• Baseline performance of 3 IOPS/GiB 
• Baseline throughput can be increased by increasing volume size 
• Maximum throughput of 160 MiB/s 
• Ability to burst to 3,000 IOPS 
• Refills at the rate of 3 IOPS and can go max upto 54,00,000 I/O credits 
• More IO credits, the more time it can burst beyond its baseline capacity 
• Larger GP2 volume refills the credits more quickly 
• Initial credits - 54,00,000 I/O credits 
• Volume accumulated 180K IOPS can burst upto 1 min (180000/3000 = 60s = 1 min)

Understanding IO1:

• For IO intensive workloads like databases 
• Range from 4 GB to 16 TB 
• Max throughput - 320 MB/s 
• IOPS can be specified directly irrespective of the volume size 
• No credit balance

Which one is cost and performance effective?

• Performance:GP2
  100 GB volume (300 IOPS) [Baseline throughput - 128 MB/s]
  can burst upto 3000 IOPS
  
  IO1
  100 GB volume (300 IOPS) [Baseline throughput - 75 MB/s ]
  No burst available
  
  
• Cost:GP2 - 100 GB volume (300 IOPS) - $7/month
  IO1 - 100 GB volume (300 IOPS) - $32/month

How much IOPS do you need?     

• Check cloudwatch metrics 
• Observe the sum of volumereadops and volumewriteops for a given period(peak) of time. 
• Calculate it for one second, this would be the IOPS you need
• Example:

           
    Read operations - 830694
    For one sec = 830694/(15*60) = 923 ops/s

    Write operations - 87500
    For one sec = 87500/(15*60) = 97.22 ops/s

    Total IOPS = 923 + 97.22 = 1020 IOPS

    At max the IOPS consumed by the volume is 1020, hence we should provision at least 1020 IOPS

Which one to choose, GP2 or IO1

• You have the answer now