Q: What are AWS EBS and S3?
A:
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AWS EBS (Elastic Block Store): It provides block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances. EBS volumes are persistent and can be attached to a single EC2 instance at a time.
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AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service): It is an object storage service that offers scalability, data availability, security, and performance. S3 allows users to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web.
Q: When to use AWS EBS vs. AWS S3?
A:
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AWS EBS: Use EBS when you need block-level storage for your EC2 instances, such as for operating system disks, databases, or transactional applications.
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AWS S3: Use S3 when you need scalable object storage for storing and retrieving large amounts of data, static assets, backups, logs, and media files, or when you need to host static websites.
Q: How do I create and attach an EBS volume to an EC2 instance?
A: Example code snippet using AWS SDK for Python (Boto3):
import boto3
# Create EC2 client
ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')
# Create EBS volume
response = ec2.create_volume(
AvailabilityZone='us-east-1a',
Size=20, # Size in GB
VolumeType='gp2' # Volume type (General Purpose SSD)
)
# Get instance ID
instance_id = 'YourInstanceID'
# Attach EBS volume to instance
ec2.attach_volume(
Device='/dev/xvdf',
InstanceId=instance_id,
VolumeId=response['VolumeId']
)
Q: How do I upload a file to AWS S3?
A: Example code snippet using AWS SDK for Python (Boto3):
import boto3
# Create S3 client
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
# Upload file to S3 bucket
bucket_name = 'your-bucket-name'
file_path = 'path/to/local/file.txt'
object_key = 'file.txt' # Key is the name of the object in the bucket
s3.upload_file(file_path, bucket_name, object_key)
Q: How do I download a file from AWS S3?
A: Example code snippet using AWS SDK for Python (Boto3):
import boto3
# Create S3 client
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
# Download file from S3 bucket
bucket_name = 'your-bucket-name'
object_key = 'file.txt' # Key is the name of the object in the bucket
local_file_path = 'path/to/save/downloaded/file.txt'
s3.download_file(bucket_name, object_key, local_file_path)
Q: How do I list files in an S3 bucket?
A: Example code snippet using AWS SDK for Python (Boto3):
import boto3
# Create S3 client
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
# List objects in S3 bucket
bucket_name = 'your-bucket-name'
response = s3.list_objects_v2(
Bucket=bucket_name
)
for obj in response['Contents']:
print(obj['Key'])
Important Interview Questions and Answers on Comparison of AWS EBS and AWS S3
Q: What are AWS EBS and AWS S3, and what are their primary use cases?
AWS EBS (Elastic Block Store) provides block-level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. It's suitable for databases, file systems, and other applications that require access to raw block-level storage. AWS S3 (Simple Storage Service), on the other hand, is an object storage service designed to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web. It's commonly used for backup and recovery, data archiving, and serving static content for web applications.
Q: What are the key differences between AWS EBS and AWS S3?
The primary difference lies in their storage types and access methods. AWS EBS provides block storage volumes, meaning it's accessed as a mounted disk on an EC2 instance. In contrast, AWS S3 offers object storage, accessed via HTTP requests. EBS volumes are typically used for storing data that requires frequent access and low-latency I/O operations, while S3 is more suitable for storing large amounts of data with high durability and availability requirements.
Q: Can you provide an example of how you would create an EBS volume and attach it to an EC2 instance using AWS SDK?
Below is an example Python code using Boto3, the AWS SDK for Python, to create an EBS volume and attach it to an EC2 instance:
import boto3
# Initialize the EC2 client
ec2 = boto3.client('ec2')
# Create EBS volume
response = ec2.create_volume(
AvailabilityZone='us-west-2a',
Size=20, # Specify the size in GiB
VolumeType='gp2' # Specify the volume type
)
# Retrieve the volume ID from the response
volume_id = response['VolumeId']
# Attach the volume to an EC2 instance
ec2.attach_volume(
Device='/dev/xvdf', # Specify the device name on the instance
InstanceId='i-1234567890abcdef0', # Specify the instance ID
VolumeId=volume_id
)
Q: How would you upload a file to AWS S3 using the AWS SDK?
Here's a Python code snippet using Boto3 to upload a file to an S3 bucket:
import boto3
# Initialize the S3 client
s3 = boto3.client('s3')
# Upload a file to S3 bucket
s3.upload_file(
'local_file.txt', # Specify the local file path
'my-bucket', # Specify the bucket name
'remote_file.txt' # Specify the key (remote path) in the bucket
)
Q: What are the pricing models for AWS EBS and AWS S3?
AWS EBS pricing is based on the provisioned storage capacity and the type of volume (e.g., gp2, io1). Additionally, there may be charges for data transfer and IOPS (input/output operations per second). AWS S3 pricing is based on storage usage, data transfer, and requests (e.g., PUT, GET, COPY). There are also different storage classes in S3 (e.g., Standard, Infrequent Access, Glacier), each with its own pricing structure.
