Elastic Block Store for Amazon EC2 Launched

Aug. 21, 2008

Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), a new persistent storage feature for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) has been launched. Amazon EC2 is an infrastructure service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. With Amazon EBS, storage volumes can be programmatically created, attached to Amazon EC2 instances, and if even more durability is desired, can be backed with a snapshot to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Prior to Amazon EBS, storage within an Amazon EC2 instance was tied to the instance itself so that when the instance was terminated, the data within the instance was lost. Now with Amazon EBS, users can choose to allocate storage volumes that persist reliably and independently from Amazon EC2 instances. Additionally, for even more durable backups and an easy way to create new volumes, Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time, consistent snapshots of volumes that are then stored to Amazon S3.

“For over two years, we’ve focused on delivering a cost-effective, web scale infrastructure to developers, giving them complete flexibility in the kinds of solutions they deliver,” said Peter De Santis, General Manager of Amazon EC2. “Persistent block storage has been among the top requests of developers using Amazon EC2, and we’re excited to deliver Amazon Elastic Block Storage designed specifically for our cloud-based, elastic computing environment.”

Amazon EBS is well suited for databases, as well as many other applications that require running a file system or access to raw block-level storage. As Amazon EC2 instances are started and stopped, the information saved in your database or application is preserved in much the same way it is with traditional physical servers.

“First, Amazon EC2 rewrote the rules of cloud computing, offering companies an intuitive and reliable means for accessing unlimited computing power. With Amazon EBS, Amazon has turned the industry on its head again, providing unlimited storage potential,” said Paul Fisher, Manager of Technology for Wired.com/CondéNet. “At Wired.com, we're leveraging Amazon EC2 to power our embeddable widgets and Wired Product Reviews. Using EC2, we've been able to build and deploy applications more quickly and reliably. EBS is the missing link -- the last piece in the cloud computing puzzle -- that enables start-ups and large corporations alike to conjure the resources they need to build any application possible. Persistence is key to most applications, and EBS provides more flexibility in this area than anything previously available. We are developing a platform in the semantic web space with requirements for unlimited, fast, reliable persistence. EC2 and EBS not only make this application feasible, they make it cost-effective and scalable.”

“ShareThis has received tremendous benefits from working with Amazon Web Services for our leading sharing platform,” said Manu Murkerji, Senior Software Developer for ShareThis, a service providing a one click way to instantly post, tag and send content via email, instant messaging and text messaging. “Amazon EBS has enabled us to create large-scale, enterprise-level databases that allow us to run and maintain various, disparate applications. EC2 and EBS together provide a cost-effective, flexible system that allows us to crunch data faster than we had been previously able – giving us a much needed advantage for our business.”