When talking to customers and users, this question is frequently left open with the note that they’ll check and tell us later. With storage being one of the main cost factors of cloud services such as Amazon’s AWS, this is not what it should be.

But who could blame them? It’s not like AWS is making it obvious to you how much of your storage resources (not only capacity but especially IOPS and throughput) you really use. It might be bad for AWS’ revenue.

Why We Built This

We believe that there is no reason to pay more than necessary. However, since it’s so hard to get hard facts on storage use, we tend to overprovision—by a lot.

Hence, we decided to do something about it. Today, we’re excited to share our new open-source tool – the AWS EBS Volume Usage Exporter!

What makes this particularly interesting is that, based on our experience, organizations typically utilize only 20-30% of their provisioned AWS EBS volumes. That means 70-80% of provisioned storage is sitting idle, quietly adding to your monthly AWS bill. Making someone else happy but you.

What Our Tool Does

The EBS Volume Usage Exporter runs in your EKS cluster and collects detailed metrics about your EBS volumes, including:

• Actual usage patterns
• IOPS consumption
• Throughput utilization
• Available disk space
• Snapshot information

All this data gets exported into a simple CSV file that you can analyze however you want.

If you like convenience, we’ve also built a handy calculator (that runs entirely in your browser – no data leaves your machine!) to help you quickly understand potential cost savings. Here’s the link to our EBS Volume Usage Calculator. No need to use it, though. The data is easy enough to get basic insight. Our calculator just automates the pricing and potential saving calculation based on current AWS price lists.

Super Simple to Get Started

To get you started quickly, we packaged everything as a Helm chart to make deployment as smooth as possible. You’ll need:

• An EKS cluster with cluster-admin privileges
• An S3 bucket
• Basic AWS permissions

The setup takes just a few minutes – we’ve included all the commands you need in our GitHub repository.

After a successful run, you can simply delete the helm chart deployment and be done with it. The exported data are available in the provided S3 bucket for download.

We Want Your Feedback!

This is just the beginning, and we’d love to hear from you!

Do the calculated numbers match your actual costs?
What other features would you find useful?

We already heard people asking for a tool that can run outside of EKS, and we’re looking into it. We would also love to extend support to utilize existing orchestration infrastructure such as DataDog, Dynatrace, or others. Most of the data is already available and should be easy to extract.

For those storage pros out there who can answer the EBS utilization question off the top of your head – we’d love to hear your stories, too!

Share your experiences and help us make this tool even better.

Try It Out!

The AWS EBS Volume Usage Exporter is open source and available now on GitHub. Give it a spin, and let us know what you think!

And hey – if you’re wondering whether you really need this tool, ask yourself: “Do I know exactly how much of my provisioned EBS storage is actually being used right now?”

If there’s even a moment of hesitation, you should check this out!

At simplyblock, we’re passionate about helping organizations optimize their cloud storage. This tool represents our commitment to the open-source community and our mission to eliminate cloud storage waste.

The post We Built a Tool to Help You Understand Your Real EBS Usage! appeared first on simplyblock.

Due to this movement, other cloud operators, many database companies (such as Neon and Nile), and infrastructure teams at large enterprises are building serverless environments, either on their premises or in their private cloud platforms.

While there are great options for serverless compute, providing serverless storage to your serverless platform tends to be more challenging. This is often fueled by a lack of understanding of what serverless storage has to provide and its requirements.

What is a Serverless Architecture?

Serverless architecture is a software design pattern that leverages serverless computing resources to build and run applications without managing the underlying architecture. These serverless compute resources are commonly provided by cloud providers such as AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, or Azure Functions and can be dynamically scaled up and down.

When designing a serverless architecture, you’ll encounter the so-called Function-as-a-Service (FaaS), meaning that the application’s core logic will be implemented in small, stateless functions that respond to events.

That said, typically, several FaaS make up the actual application, sending events between them. Since the underlying infrastructure is abstracted away, the functions don’t know how requests or responses are handled, and their implementations are designed for vendor lock-in and built against a cloud-provider-specific API.

Cloud-vendor-agnostic solutions exist, such as knative, but require at least parts of the team to manage the Kubernetes infrastructure. They can, however, take the burden away from other internal and external development teams.

What is Serverless Compute?

While a serverless architecture describes the application design that runs on top of a serverless compute infrastructure, serverless compute itself describes the cloud computing model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation and provisioning of server resources.

It is essential to understand that serverless doesn’t mean “without servers” but “as a user, I don’t have to plan, provision, or manage the infrastructure.”

In essence, the cloud provider (or whoever manages the serverless infrastructure) takes the burden from the developer. Serverless compute environments fully auto-scale, starting or stopping instances of the functions according to the needed capacity. Due to their stateless nature, it’s easy to stop and restart them at any point in time. That means that function instances are often very short-lived.

Popular serverless compute platforms include AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions. For self-managed operations, there is knative (mentioned before), as well as OpenFaaS and OpenFunction (which seems to have less activity in the recent future).

They all enable developers to focus on writing code without managing the underlying infrastructure.

What is a Serverless Storage System?

Serverless storage refers to a cloud storage model where the underlying infrastructure, capacity planning, and scaling are abstracted away from the user. With serverless storage, customers don’t have to worry about provisioning or managing storage servers or volumes. Instead, they can store and retrieve data while the serverless storage handles all the backend infrastructure.

Serverless storage solutions come in different forms and shapes, beginning with an object storage interface, such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage. Object storage is excellent when storing unstructured data, such as documents or media.

Another option that people love to use for serverless storage is serverless databases. Various options are available, depending on your needs: relational, NoSQL, time-series, and graph databases. This might be the easiest way to go, depending on how you need to access data. Examples of such serverless databases include Amazon Aurora Serverless, Google’s Cloud Datastore, and external companies such as Neon or Nile.

When self-managing your serverless infrastructure with knative or one of the alternative options, you can use Kubernetes CSI storage providers to provide storage into your functions. However, you may add considerable startup time if you choose the wrong CSI driver. I might be biased, but simplyblock is an excellent option with its neglectable provisioning and attachment times, as well as features such as multi-attach, where a volume can be attached to multiple functions (for example, to provide a shared set of data).

Why Serverless Architectures?

Most people think of cost-efficiency when it comes to serverless architectures. However, this is only one side of the coin. If your use cases aren’t a good fit for a serverless environment, it will hold true—more on when serverless makes sense later.

In serverless architectures, functions are triggered through an event, either from the outside world (like an HTTP request) or an event initiated by another function. If no function instance is up and running, a new instance will be started. The same goes for situations where all function instances are busy. If function instances idle, they’ll be shut down.

Serverless functions usually use a pay-per-use model. A function’s extremely short lifespan can lead to cost reductions over deployment models like containers and virtual machines, which tend to run longer.

Apart from that, serverless architectures have more benefits. Many are moving in the same direction as microservices architectures, but with the premise that they are easier to implement and maintain.

First and foremost, serverless solutions are designed for scalability and elasticity. They quickly and automatically scale up and down depending on the incoming workload. It’s all hands-free.

Another benefit is that development cycles are often shortened. Due to the limited size and functionality of a FaaS, changes are fast to implement and easy to test. Additionally, updating the function is as simple as deploying the new version. All existing function instances finish their current work and shut down. In the meantime, the latest version will be started up. Due to its stateless nature, this is easy to achieve.

What are the Complexities of Serverless Architecture?

Writing serverless solutions has the benefits of fast iteration, simplified deployments, and potential cost savings. However, they also come with their own set of complexities.

Designing real stateless code isn’t easy, at least when we’re not just talking about simple transformation functionality. That’s why a FaaS receives and passes context information along during its events.

What works great for small bits of context is challenging for larger pieces. In this situation, a larger context, or state, can mean lots of things, starting from simple cross-request information that should be available without transferring it with every request over more involved data, such as lookup information to enrich and cross-check, all the way to actual complex data, like when you want to implement a serverless database. And yes, a serverless database needs to store its data somewhere.

That’s where serverless storage comes in, and simply put, this is why all serverless solutions have state storage alternatives.

What is Serverless Storage?

Serverless storage refers to storage solutions that are fully integrated into serverless compute environments without manual intervention. These solutions scale and grow according to user demand and complement the pay-by-use payment model of serverless platforms.

Serverless storage lets you store information across multiple requests or functions. 

As mentioned above, cloud environments offer a wide selection of serverless storage options. However, all of them are vendor-bound and lock you into their services. 

However, when you design your serverless infrastructure or service, these services don’t help you. It’s up to you to provide the serverless storage. In this case, a cloud-native and serverless-supporting storage engine can simplify this talk immensely. Whether you want to provide object storage, a serverless database, or file-based storage, an underlying cloud-native block storage solution is the perfect building block underneath. However, this block storage solution needs to be able to scale and grow with your needs easily and quickly to provision and support snapshotting, cloning, and attaching to multiple function instances.

Why do Serverless Architectures Require Serverless Storage?

Serverless storage has particular properties designed for serverless environments. It needs to keep up with the specific requirements of serverless architectures, most specifically short lifetimes, extremely fast up and down scaling or restarts, easy use across multiple versions during updates, and easy integration through APIs utilized by the FaaS.

The most significant issues are that it must be used by multiple function instances simultaneously and is quickly available to new instances on other nodes, regardless of whether those are migrated over or used for scaling out. That means that the underlying storage technology must be prepared to handle these tasks easily.

These are just the most significant requirements, but there are more:

1. Stateless nature: Serverless functions spin up, execute, and terminate due to their stateless nature. Without fast, persistent storage that can be attached or accessed without any additional delay, this fundamental property of serverless functions would become a struggle.
2. Scalability needs: Serverless compute is built to scale automatically based on user demand. A storage layer needs to seamlessly support the growth and shrinking of serverless infrastructures and handle variations in I/O patterns, meaning that traditional storage systems with fixed capacity limits don’t align well with the requirements of serverless workloads.
3. Cost efficiency: One reason people engage with serverless compute solutions is cost efficiency. Serverless compute users pay by actual execution time. That means that serverless storage must support similar payment structures and help serverless infrastructure operators efficiently manage and scale their storage capacities and performance characteristics.
4. Management overhead: Serverless compute environments are designed to eliminate manual server management. Therefore, the storage solution needs to minimize its manual administrative tasks. Allocating and scaling storage requirements must be fully integratable and automated via API calls or fully automatic. Also, the integration must be seamless if multiple storage tiers are available for additional cost savings.
5. Performance requirements: Serverless functions require fast, if not immediate, access to data when they spin up. Traditional storage solutions introduce delays due to allocation and additional latency, negatively impacting serverless functions’ performance. As functions are paid by runtime, their operational cost increases.
6. Integration needs: Serverless architectures typically combine many services, as individual functions use different services. That said, the underlying storage solution of a serverless environment needs to support all kinds of services provided to users. Additionally, seamless integration with the management services of the serverless platform is required.

There are quite some requirements. For the alignment of serverless compute and serverless storage, storage solutions need to provide an efficient and manageable layer that seamlessly integrates with the overall management layer of the serverless platform.

Simplyblock for Serverless Storage

When designing a serverless environment, the storage layer must be designed to keep up with the pace. Simplyblock enables serverless infrastructures to provide dynamic and scalable storage.

To achieve this, simplyblock provides several characteristics that perfectly align with serverless principles:

1. Dynamic resource allocation: Simplyblock’s thin provisioning makes capacity planning irrelevant. Storage is allocated on-demand as data is written, similar to how serverless platforms allocate resources. That means every volume can be arbitrarily large to accommodate unpredictable future growth. Additionally, simplyblock’s logical volumes are resizable, meaning that the volume can be enlarged at any point in the future.
2. Automatic scaling: Simplyblock’s storage engine can indefinitely grow. To acquire additional backend storage, simplyblock can automatically acquire additional persistent disks (like Amazon EBS volumes) from cloud providers or attach additional storage nodes to its cluster when capacity is about to exceed, handling scaling without user intervention.
3. Abstraction of infrastructure: Users interact with simplyblock’s virtual drives like normal hard disks. This abstracts away the complexity of the underlying storage pooling and backend storage technologies.
4. Unified interface: Simplyblock provides a unified storage interface (NVMe) logical device that abstracts away underlying, diverging storage interfaces behind an easy-to-understand disk design. That enables services not specifically designed to talk to object storages or similar technologies to immediately benefit from them, just like PostgreSQL or MySQL.
5. Extensibility: Due to its disk-like storage interface, simplyblock is highly extensible in terms of solutions that can be run on top of it. Databases, object storage, file storage, and specific storage APIs, simplyblock provides scalable block storage to all of them, making it the perfect backend solution for serverless environments.
6. Crash-consistent and recoverable: Serverless storage must always be up and running. Simplyblock’s distributed erasure coding (parity information similar to RAID-5 or 6) enables high availability and fault tolerance on the storage level with a high storage efficiency, way below simple replication. Additionally, simplyblock provides storage cluster replication (sync / async), consistent snapshots across multiple logical volumes, and disaster recovery options.
7. Automated management: With features like automatic storage tiering to cheaper object storage (such as Amazon S3), automatic scaling, as well as erasure coding and backups for data protection, simplyblock eliminates manual management overhead and hands-on tasks. Simplyblock clusters are fully autonomous and manage the underlying storage backend automatically.
8. Flexible integration: Serverless platforms require storage to be seamlessly allocated and provisioned. Simplyblock achieves this through its API, which can be integrated into the standard provisioning flow of new customer sign-ups. If the new infrastructure runs on Kubernetes, integration is even easier with the Kubernetes CSI driver, allowing seamless integration with container-based serverless platforms such as knative.
9. Pay-per-use potential: Due to the automatic scalability, thin provisioning, and seamless resizing and integration, simplyblock enables you to provide your customers with an industry-loved pay-by-use model for managed service providers, perfectly aligning with the most common serverless pricing models.

Simplyblock is the perfect backend storage for all your serverless storage needs while future-proofing your infrastructure. As data grows and evolves, simplyblock’s flexibility and scalability ensure you can adapt without massive overhauls or migrations.

Remember, simplyblock offers powerful features like thin provisioning, storage pooling, and tiering, helping you to provide a cost-efficient, pay-by-use enabled storage solution. Get started now and find out how easy it is to operate services on top of simplyblock.

The post Serverless Compute Need Serverless Storage appeared first on simplyblock.

The debate over the optimal storage solution has been ongoing. Local instance storage on AWS (i.e. ephemeral NVMe disk attached to EC2 instance) brings remarkable cost-performance ratios. It offers 20 times better performance and 10 times lower access latency than EBS. It’s a powerhouse for quick, ephemeral storage needs. In simple words, local NVME disk is very fast and relatively cheap, but not scalable and not persistent.

Recently, Vantage posted an article titled “Don’t use EBS for Cloud Native Services“. We agree with this problem statement, however we also strongly believe that there is a better solution that using Local NVMe SSD Storage on AWS as an alternative to EBS. Local NVMe to EBS is not like comparing apples to apples, but more like apples to oranges.

The Local Instance NVMe Storage Advantage

Local storage on AWS excels in speed and cost-efficiency, delivering performance that’s 20 times better and latency that’s 10 times lower compared to EBS. For certain workloads with temporary storage needs, it’s a clear winner. But, let’s acknowledge the reasons why data centers have traditionally separated storage and compute.

Overcoming Traditional Challenges of Local Storage

Simplyblock provides an innovatrive approach that marries the cost and performance advantages of local instance storage with the benefits of pooled cloud storage. It offers the best of both worlds—high-speed, low-latency performance near to local storage, coupled with the robustness and flexibility of pooled cloud storage.

Why Choose simplyblock on AWS?

1. Performance and Cost Efficiency: Enjoy the benefits of local storage without compromising on scalability, reliability, and high availability.
2. Data Protection: simplyblock employs advanced data protection mechanisms,
   ensuring that your data survives any instance outage.
3. Seamless Operations: Upgrade and maintain compute instances without impacting storage, ensuring continuous operations.
4. Data Services Galore: Unlock the potential of various data services without affecting local CPU performance.

While local instance storage has its merits, the future lies in a harmonious blend of the speed of local storage and the resilience of cloud-pooled storage. With simplyblock, we transcend the limitations of local NVMe disk, providing you with a storage solution that’s not just powerful but also versatile, scalable, and intelligently designed for the complexities of the cloud era.

The post Local NVMe Storage on AWS – Pros and Cons appeared first on simplyblock.

For environments with high-performance requirements such as transactional databases, where low-latency access and optimized storage costs are key, alternative solutions are essential. This is where simplyblock steps in, offering a new way to manage storage that addresses common pain points in traditional EBS or local NVMe disk usage—such as limited scalability, complex resizing processes, and the cost of underutilized storage capacity.

What is Simplyblock?

Simplyblock is known for providing top performance based on distributed (clustered) NVMe instance storage at low cost with great data availability and durability. Simplyblock provides storage to Linux instances and Kubernetes environments via the NVMe block storage and NVMe over Fabrics (using TCP/IP as the underlying transport layer) protocols and the simplyblock CSI Driver.

Simplyblock’s storage orchestration technology is fast. The service provides access latency between 100 us and 500 us, depending on the IO access pattern and deployment topology. That means that simplyblock’s access latency is comparable to, or even lower than on Amazon EBS io2 volumes, which typically provide between 200 us to 300 us.

To make sure we only provide storage which will keep up, we test simplyblock extensively. With simplyblock you can easily achieve more than 1 million IOPS at a 4KiB block size on single EC2 compute instances. This is several times higher than the most scalable Amazon EBS volumes, io2 Block Express. On the other hand, simplyblock’s cost of capacity is comparable to io2. However, with simplyblock IOPS come for free – at absolutely no extra charge. Therefore, depending on the capacity to IOPS ratio of io2 volumes, it is possible to achieve cost advantages up to 10x .

For customers requiring very low storage access latency and high IOPS per TiB, simplyblock provides the best cost efficiency available today.

Why Simplyblock over Simple Amazon EBS?

Many customers are generally satisfied with the performance of their gp3 EBS volumes. Access latency of 6 to 10 ms is fine, and they never have to go beyond the included 3,000 IOPS (on gp2 and gp3). They should still care for simplyblock, because there is more. Much more.

Benefits of Thin Provisioning

With gp3, customers have to pay for provisioned rather than utilized capacity (~USD 80 per TiB provisioned). According to our research, the average utilization of Amazon EBS gp3 volumes is only at ~30%. This means that customers are actually paying more than three times the price per TiB of utilized storage. That said, due to the low utilization below one-third, the actual price comes down to about USD 250 per TiB. The higher the utilization, the closer a customer would be to the projected USD 80 per TiB.

In addition to the price inefficiency, customers also have to manage the resizing of gp3 volumes when utilization reaches the current capacity limit. However, resizing has its own number of limitations in EBS it is only possible once every six hours. To mitigate potential issues during that time, volumes are commonly doubled in size.

On the other hand, simplyblock provides thin provisioned logical volumes. This means that you can provision your volumes nearly without any restriction in size. Think of growable partitions that are sliced out of the storage pool. Logical volumes can also be over-provisioned, meaning, you can set the requested storage capacity to exceed the storage pool’s current size. There is no charge for the over-provisioned capacity as long as you do not use it.

That said, simplyblock thinly provisions NVMe volumes from a storage pool which is either made up of distributed local instance storage or gp3 volumes. The underlying pool is resized before it runs out of storage capacity.

These means enable you to save massively on storage, while also simplifying your operations. No more manual or script-based resizing! No more custom alerts before running out of storage.

Benefits of Storage Tiering

But if you feel there should be even more potential to save on storage, you are absolutely right!

The total data stored on a single EBS volume has very different access patterns. Let’s explore together what the average database setup looks like. The typical corporate’s transactional database will easily qualify as a “hot” storage. It is commonly stored on SSD-based EBS volumes. Nobody would think of putting this database to slow file storage stored on HDD or Amazon S3.

In reality, however, data that belongs to a database is never homogeneous when it comes to performance requirements. There is, for example, the so-called database transaction log, often referred to as write-ahead log (WAL) or simply a database journal. The WAL is quite sensitive to access latency and requires a high IOPS rate for writes. On the other hand, the log is relatively small compared to the entire dataset in the database.

Furthermore, some other data files store tablespaces and index spaces. Many of them are read so frequently that they are always kept in memory. They do not depend on storage performance. Others are accessed less frequently, meaning they have to be loaded from storage every time they’re accessed. They require solid storage performance on read.

Last but not least, there are large tables which are commonly used for archiving or document storage. They are written or read infrequently and typically in large IO sizes (batches). While throughput speed is relevant for accessing this data, access latency is not.

To support all of the above use cases, simplyblock supports automatic tiering. Our tiering will place less frequently accessed data to either Amazon EBS (st2) or Amazon S3, called warm storage. The tiering implementation is optimized for throughput, hence large amounts of data can be written or read in parallel. Simplyblock automatically identifies individual segments of data, which qualify for tiering, and moves them automatically to secondary storage, and only after tiering was successful, cleaning them up on the “hot” tier. This reduces the storage demand in the hot pool.

The AWS cost ratio between hot and warm storage is about 5:1, cutting cost to about 20% for tiered data. Tiering is completely transparent to you and data is automatically read from tiered storage when requested.

Based on our observations, we often see that up to 75% of all stored data can be tiered to warm storage. This creates another massive potential in storage costs savings.

How to Prevent Data Duplication

But there is yet more to come.

The AWS’ gp3 volumes do not allow multi-attach, meaning the same volume cannot be attached to multiple virtual machines or containers at the same time. Furthermore, its reliability is also relatively low (indicated at 99.8% – 99.9%) compared to Amazon S3.

That means neither a loss of availability nor a loss of data can be ruled out in case of an incident.

Therefore, additional steps need to be taken to increase availability of the storage consuming service, as well as the reliability of the storage itself. The common measure is to employ storage replication (RAID-1, or application-level replication). However, this leads to additional operational complexity, utilization of network bandwidth, and to a duplication of storage demand (which doubles the storage capacity and cost).

Simplyblock mitigates the requirement to replicate storage. First, the same thinly provisioned volume can be attached to more than one Amazon EC2 instance (or container) and, second, the reliability of each individual volume is higher (99.9999%) due to the internal use of erasure coding (parity data) to protect the data.

Multi-attach helps to cut the storage cost by half.

The Cost of Backup

Last but not least, backups. Yes there is even more.

A snapshot taken from an Amazon EBS volume is stored in an S3-like storage. However, AWS charges significantly more per TiB than for the same storage directly on S3. Actually about 3.5 times.

Snapshots taken from simplyblock logical volumes, however, are stored into a standard Amazon S3 bucket and based on the standard S3 pricing, giving you yet another nice cost reduction.

Near-Zero RPO Disaster Recovery

Anyhow, there is one more feature that we really want to talk about. Disaster recovery is an optional feature. Our DR comes at a minimum RPO and can be deployed without any redundancy on either the block storage or the compute layer between zones. Additionally, no data transfers between zones are needed.

Simplyblock employs asynchronous replication to store any change on the storage pool to an S3 bucket. This enables a fully crash-consistent and near-real-time option for disaster recovery. You can bootstrap and restart your entire environment after a disaster. This works in the same or a different availability zone and without having to take care of backup management yourself.

And if something happened, accidental deletion or even a successful ransomware attack which encrypted your data. Simplyblock is here to help. Our asynchronous replication journal provides full Point-in-Time-Recovery functionality on the block storage layer. No need for your service or database to support it. Just rewind the storage to whatever point in time in the past.

It also utilizes write- and deletion-protected on its S3 bucket making the journal itself resilient to ransomware attacks. That said, simplyblock provides a sophisticated solution to disaster recovery and cybersecurity breaches without the need for manual backup management.

Simplyblock is Storage Optimization – just for you

Simplyblock provides a number of advantages for environments that utilize a large number of Amazon EBS gp2 or gp3 volumes. Thin provisioning enables you to consolidate unused storage capacity and minimize the spent. Due to the automatic pool enlargement (increasing the pool with additional EBS volumes or storage nodes), you’ll never run out of storage space but also only require the least amount.

Together with automatic tiering, you can move infrequently used data blocks to warm or even cold storage. Fully transparent to the application. The same is true for our disaster recovery. Built into the storage layer, every application can benefit from point in time recovery, removing almost all RPO (Recovery Point Objective) from your whole infrastructure. And with consistent snapshots across volumes, you can enable a full-blown infrastructure recovery in case of an availability zone outage, right from ground up.

With simplyblock you get more features than mentioned here. Get started right away and learn about our other features and benefits.

The post Simplyblock for AWS: Environments with many gp2 or gp3 Volumes appeared first on simplyblock.

The Database Dilemma: Managed Services or Self-Managed?

The first crucial decision comes when choosing the operating model for your databases: should you opt for managed services like AWS RDS or take the reins yourself with a self-managed solution on Kubernetes? It’s not just about the upfront costs – there’s a whole iceberg of expenses lurking beneath the surface.

The Allure of Managed Services

At first glance, managed services like AWS RDS seem to be a no-brainer. They promise hassle-free management, automatic updates, and round-the-clock support. But is it really as rosy as it seems?

The Visible Costs

1. Subscription Fees : You’re paying for the convenience, and it doesn’t come cheap.
2. Storage Costs : Every gigabyte counts, and it adds up quickly.
3. Data Transfer Fees : Moving data in and out? Be prepared to open your wallet.

The Hidden Expenses

1. Overprovisioning : Are you paying for more than you are actually using?
2. Personnel costs : Using RDS and assuming that you don’t need to understand databases anymore? Surprise! You still need team that will need to configure the database and set it up for your requirements.
3. Performance Limitations : When you hit a ceiling, scaling up can be costly.
4. Vendor Lock-in : Switching providers? That’ll cost you in time and money.
5. Data Migration : Moving data between services can cost a fortune.
6. Backup and Storage : Those “convenient” backups? They’re not free. In addition, AWS RDS does not let you plug in other storage solution than AWS-native EBS volumes, which can get quite expensive if your database is IO-intensive

The Power of Self-Managed Kubernetes Databases

On the flip side, managing your databases on Kubernetes might seem daunting at first. But let’s break it down and see where you could be saving big.

Initial Investment

1. Learning Curve : Yes, there’s an upfront cost in time and training. You need to have on your team engineers that are comfortable with Kubernetes or Amazon EKS.
2. Setup and Configuration : Getting things right takes effort, but it pays off.

Long-term Savings

1. Flexibility : Scale up or down as needed, without overpaying.
2. Multi-Cloud Freedom : Avoid vendor lock-in and negotiate better rates.
3. Resource Optimization : Use your hardware efficiently across workloads.
4. Resource Sharing : Kubernetes lets you efficiently allocate resources.
5. Open-Source Tools : Leverage free, powerful tools for monitoring and management.
6. Customization : Tailor your setup to your exact needs, no compromise.

Where are the Savings Coming from when using Kubernetes for your Database Management?

In a self-managed Kubernetes environment, you have greater control over resource allocation, leading to improved utilization and efficiency. Here’s why:

Self-managed Kubernetes databases can also significantly reduce data transfer costs compared to managed services. Here’s how:

By leveraging these strategies in a self-managed Kubernetes environment, organizations can significantly optimize their resource usage and reduce data transfer costs, leading to substantial savings compared to typical managed database services.

Breaking down the Numbers: a Cost Comparison between PostgreSQL on RDS vs EKS

Let’s get down to brass tacks. How do the costs really stack up? We’ve crunched the numbers for a small Postgres database between using managed RDS service and hosting on Kubernetes. For Kubernetes we are using EC2 instances with local NVMe disks that are managed on EKS and simplyblock as storage orchestration layer.

Scenario: 3TB Postgres Database with High Availability (3 nodes) and Single AZ Deployment

Managed Service (AWS RDS) using three Db.m4.2xlarge on Demand with Gp3 Volumes

Editorial: See the pricing calculator for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

Self-Managed on Kubernetes (EKS) using three i3en.xlarge Instances on Demand

That’s a whopping 48% saving over three years! But wait, there’s more to consider. We have made some simplistic assumptions to estimate additional benefits of self-hosting to showcase the real potential of savings. While the actual efficiencies may vary from company to company, it should at least give a good understanding of where the hidden benefits might lie.

Additional Benefits of Self-Hosting (Estimated Annual Savings)

1. Resource optimization/sharing : Assumption: 20% better resource utilization (assuming existing Kubernetes clusters) Estimated Annual Saving: 20% x 989.88 x 12= $2,375
2. Reduced Data Transfer Costs : Assumption: 50% reduction in data transfer fees Estimated Annual Saving: $2,000
3. Flexible Scaling : Avoid over-provisioning during non-peak times Estimated Annual Saving: $3,000
4. Multi-Cloud Strategy : Ability to negotiate better rates across providers Estimated Annual Saving: $5,000
5. Open-Source Tools : Reduced licensing costs for management tools Estimated Annual Saving: $4,000

Disaster Recovery Insights

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective) Improvement : Self-managed: Potential for 40% faster recovery Estimated value: $10,000 per hour of downtime prevented
• RPO (Recovery Point Objective) Enhancement : Self-managed: Achieve near-zero data loss Estimated annual value: $20,000 in potential data loss prevention

Total Estimated Annual Benefit of Self-Hosting

Self-hosting pays off. Here is the summary of benefits: Base Savings: $8,400/year Additional Benefits: $15,920/year Disaster Recovery Improvement: $30,000/year (conservative estimate)

Total Estimated Annual Additional Benefit: $54,695

Total Estimated Additional Benefits over 3 Years: $164,085

Note: These figures are estimates and can vary based on specific use cases, implementation efficiency, and negotiated rates with cloud providers.

Beyond the Dollar Signs: the Real Value Proposition

Money talks, but it’s not the only factor in play. Let’s look at the broader picture.

Performance and Scalability

With self-managed Kubernetes databases, you’re in the driver’s seat. Need to scale up for a traffic spike? Done. Want to optimize for a specific workload? You’ve got the power.

Security and Compliance

Think managed services have the upper hand in security? Think again. With self-managed solutions, you have granular control over your security measures. Plus, you’re not sharing infrastructure with unknown entities.

Innovation and Agility

In the fast-paced tech world, agility is king. Self-managed solutions on Kubernetes allow you to adopt cutting-edge technologies and practices without waiting for your provider to catch up.

Is the Database on Kubernetes for Everyone?

Definitely not. While self-managed databases on Kubernetes offer significant benefits in terms of cost savings, flexibility, and control, they’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here’s why:

• Expertise: Managing databases on Kubernetes demands a high level of expertise in both database administration and Kubernetes orchestration. Not all organizations have this skill set readily available. Self-management means taking on responsibilities like security patching, performance tuning, and disaster recovery planning. For smaller teams or those with limited DevOps resources, this can be overwhelming.
• Scale of operations : For simple applications with predictable, low-to-moderate database requirements, the advanced features and flexibility of Kubernetes might be overkill. Managed services could be more cost-effective in these scenarios. Same applies for very small operations or startups in early stages – the cost benefits of self-managed databases on Kubernetes might not outweigh the added complexity and resource requirements.

While database management on Kubernetes offers compelling advantages, organizations must carefully assess their specific needs, resources, and constraints before making the switch. For many, especially larger enterprises or those with complex, dynamic database requirements, the benefits can be substantial. However, others might find that managed services better suit their current needs and capabilities.

Bonus: Simplyblock

There is one more bonus benefit that you get when running your databases in Kubernetes – you can add simplyblock as your storage orchestration layer behind a single CSI driver that will automatically and intelligently serve storage service of your choice. Do you need fast NVMe cache for some hot transactional data with random IO but don’t want to keep it hot forever? We’ve got you covered!

Simplyblock is an innovative cloud-native storage product, which runs on AWS, as well as other major cloud platforms. Simplyblock virtualizes, optimizes, and orchestrates existing cloud storage services (such as Amazon EBS or Amazon S3) behind a NVMe storage interface and a Kubernetes CSI driver. As such, it provides storage for compute instances (VMs) and containers. We have optimized for IO-heavy database workloads, including OLTP relational databases, graph databases, non-relational document databases, analytical databases, fast key-value stores, vector databases, and similar solutions.

This optimization has been built from the ground up to orchestrate a wide range of database storage needs, such as reliable and fast (high write-IOPS) storage for write-ahead logs and support for ultra-low latency, as well as high IOPS for random read operations. Simplyblock is highly configurable to optimally serve the different database query engines.

Some of the key benefits of using simplyblock alongside your stateful Kubernetes workloads are:

• Cost Reduction, Margin Increase: Thin provisioning, compression, deduplication of hot-standby nodes, and storage virtualization with multiple tenants increases storage usage while enabling gradual storage increase.
• Easy Scalability of Storage: Single node databases require highly scalable storage (IOPS, throughput, capacity) since data cannot be distributed to scale. Simplyblock pools either Amazon EBS volumes or local instance storage from EC2 virtual machines and provides a scalable and cost effective storage solution for single node databases.
• Enables Database Branching Features: Using instant snapshots and clones, databases can be quickly branched out and provided to customers. Due to copy-on-write, the storage usage doesn’t increase unless the data is changed on either the primary or branch. Customers could be charged for “additional storage” though.
• Enhances Security: Using an S3-based streaming of a recovery journal, the database can be quickly recovered from full AZ and even region outages. It also provides protection against typical ransomware attacks where data gets encrypted by enabling Point-in-Time-Recovery down to a few hundred milliseconds granularity.

Conclusion: the True Cost Revealed

When it comes to database management, the true cost goes far beyond the monthly bill. By choosing a self-managed Kubernetes solution, you’re not just saving money – you’re investing in flexibility, performance, and future-readiness. The savings and benefits will be always use-case and company-specific but the general conclusion shall remain unchanged. While operating databases in Kubernetes is not for everyone, for those who have the privilege of such choice, it should be a no-brainer kind of decision.

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Why Migrate to AWS?

Migrating to AWS offers numerous benefits, including scalability, cost savings, improved performance, and enhanced security. AWS’s extensive range of storage solutions caters to diverse needs, from simple object storage to high-performance block storage. By leveraging AWS’s robust infrastructure, businesses can focus on innovation and growth without worrying about underlying IT challenges.

Understanding AWS Storage Options

Before diving into the migration process, it’s crucial to understand the various storage options AWS offers:

• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) Amazon S3 is an object storage service that provides scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It’s ideal for storing and retrieving data at any time.
• Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) Amazon EBS provides block storage for EC2 instances. It’s suitable for applications requiring low-latency data access and offers different volume types optimized for performance and cost.
• Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) Amazon EFS is designed to be highly scalable and elastic. It provides scalable file storage for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.
• Amazon Glacier Amazon Glacier is a secure, durable, and extremely low-cost cloud storage service for data archiving and long-term backup. It’s ideal for data that is infrequently accessed

AWS provides several migration tools, such as AWS DataSync and AWS Snowball, to ensure a smooth and efficient data migration process. Based on your data volume and migration requirements, choose the right tool.

How is data stored in AWS? AWS stores the data of each storage service separately. That means that AWS storage services are not synchronized and your data might be frequently duplicated multiple times. Coordination between AWS storage services might be resolved using orchestration tools such as simplyblock.

Steps for Migrating to AWS

1. Assess your Current Environment

Begin by evaluating your current storage infrastructure. Identify the types of data you store, how often it’s accessed, and any compliance requirements. This assessment will help you choose the right AWS storage services for your needs.

2. Plan your Migration Strategy

Develop a comprehensive migration plan that outlines the steps, timelines, and resources required. Decide whether you’ll use a lift-and-shift approach, re-architecting, or a hybrid strategy.

3. Choose the right AWS Storage Services

Based on your assessment, select the appropriate AWS storage services. For instance, Amazon S3 can be used for object storage, EBS for block storage, and EFS for scalable file storage.

4. Set up the AWS Environment

Set up your AWS environment, including creating an AWS account, configuring Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, and setting up Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs).

5. Use AWS Migration Tools

AWS offers several tools to assist with migration, such as

• AWS Storage Gateway, which bridges your on-premises data and AWS Cloud storage
• AWS DataSync automates moving data between on-premises storage and AWS
• AWS Snowball physically transports large amounts of data to AWS.

6. Migrate Data

Start migrating your data using the chosen AWS tools and services. Ensure data integrity and security during the transfer process. Test the migrated data to verify its accuracy and completeness.

7. Optimize Storage Performance

After migration, monitor and optimize your storage performance. Use AWS CloudWatch to track performance metrics and make necessary adjustments to enhance efficiency.

8. Ensure Data Security and Compliance

AWS provides various security features to protect your data, including encryption, access controls, and monitoring. Ensure your data meets regulatory compliance requirements.

9. Validate and Test

Conduct thorough testing to validate that your applications function correctly in the new environment. Ensure that data access and performance meet your expectations.

10. Decommission Legacy Systems

Once you’ve confirmed your data’s successful migration and testing, you can decommission your legacy storage systems. Ensure all data has been securely transferred and backed up before decommissioning.

Common Challenges in AWS Migration

1. Data Transfer Speed

Large data transfers can take time. Use tools like AWS Snowball for faster data transfer.

2. Data Compatibility

Ensure your data formats are compatible with AWS storage services. Consider data transformation if necessary.

3. Security Concerns

Data security is paramount. Utilize AWS security features such as encryption and IAM roles.

4. Cost Management

Monitor and manage your AWS storage costs. Use AWS Cost Explorer and set up budget alerts.

Benefits of AWS Storage Solutions

1. Scalability: AWS storage solutions scale according to your needs, ensuring you never run out of space.
2. Cost-Effectiveness: Pay only for the storage you actually use and leverage different storage tiers to optimize costs.
3. Reliability: AWS guarantees high availability and durability for your data.
4. Security: Robust security features protect your data against unauthorized access and threats.
5. Flexibility: Choose from various storage options for different workloads and applications.

Conclusion

Migrating to AWS from a storage perspective involves careful planning, execution, and optimization. By understanding the various AWS storage options and following a structured migration process, you can ensure a smooth transition to the cloud. AWS’s comprehensive suite of tools and services simplifies the migration journey, allowing you to focus on leveraging the cloud’s benefits for your business.

FAQs

How Simplyblock can be used with AWS Migration

Migrating to AWS can be a complex process, but using simplyblock can significantly simplify this journey while optimizing your costs, too.

Simplyblock software provides a seamless bridge between local NVMe disk, Amazon EBS, and Amazon S3, integrating these storage options into a cohesive system designed for the ultimate scale and performance of IO-intensive stateful workloads. By combining the high performance of local NVMe storage with the reliability and cost-efficiency of EBS (gp2 and gp3 volumes) and S3, respectively, simplyblock enables enterprises to optimize their storage infrastructure for stateful applications, ensuring scalability, cost savings, and enhanced performance. With simplyblock, you can save up to 80% of your AWS database storage costs.

Our technology uses NVMe over TCP for minimal access latency, high IOPS/GB, and efficient CPU core utilization, outperforming local NVMe disks and Amazon EBS in cost/performance ratio at scale. Ideal for high-performance Kubernetes environments, simplyblock combines the benefits of local-like latency with the scalability and flexibility necessary for dynamic AWS EKS deployments, ensuring optimal performance for I/O-sensitive workloads like databases. Using erasure coding (a better RAID) instead of replicas, simplyblock minimizes storage overhead while maintaining data safety and fault tolerance. This approach reduces storage costs without compromising reliability.

Simplyblock also includes additional features such as instant snapshots (full and incremental), copy-on-write clones, thin provisioning, compression, encryption, and many more – in short, there are many ways in which simplyblock can help you optimize your cloud costs. Get started using simplyblock right now and see how simplyblock can simplify and optimize your AWS migration. Simplyblock is available on AWS Marketplace.

The post AWS Migration: How to Migrate into the Cloud? Data Storage Perspective. appeared first on simplyblock.

The AWS Workload Migration Program is a comprehensive framework designed to help organizations migrate their workloads to the AWS cloud efficiently and effectively. It encompasses a range of tools, best practices, and services that streamline the migration process.

Key Features of the AWS Workload Migration Program

1. Comprehensive Migration Strategy: The program offers a step-by-step migration strategy tailored to meet the specific needs of different workloads and industries.
2. Robust Tools and Services: AWS provides a suite of robust tools and services, including AWS Migration Hub , AWS Application Migration Service, and AWS Database Migration Service, to facilitate smooth and secure migrations.

Benefits of using AWS Workload Migration Program

1. Reduced Migration Time: With pre-defined best practices and automated tools, the migration process is significantly faster, reducing downtime and disruption.
2. Minimized Risks: The program includes risk management strategies to ensure data integrity and security throughout the migration process.

Steps Involved in the AWS Workload Migration Program

1. Assessment Phase Evaluating Current Workloads: Assessing your current workloads to understand their requirements and dependencies is the first step in the migration process. Identifying Migration Objectives: Define clear objectives for what you want to achieve with the migration, such as improved performance, cost savings, or scalability.
2. Planning Phase Creating a Migration Plan: Develop a detailed migration plan that outlines the steps, timelines, and resources required for the migration. Defining Success Criteria: Establish success criteria to measure the effectiveness of the migration and ensure it meets your business goals.
3. Migration Phase Executing the Migration: Carry out the migration using AWS tools and services, ensuring minimal disruption to your operations. Ensuring Minimal Downtime: Implement strategies to minimize downtime during the migration, such as using live data replication and phased cutovers.
4. Optimization Phase Post-Migration Optimization: After migration, optimize your workloads for performance and cost-efficiency using AWS and simplyblock tools. Continuous Monitoring: Continuously monitor your workloads to ensure they are running optimally and to identify any areas for improvement.

Challenges in Cloud Migration

1. Common Migration Hurdles Data Security Concerns: Ensuring the security of data during and after migration is a top priority and a common challenge. Compatibility Issues: Ensuring that applications and systems are compatible with the new cloud environment can be complex.
2. Overcoming Migration Challenges Using the Right Tools: Leveraging the right tools, such as AWS Migration Hub and simplyblock’s storage solutions, can help overcome these challenges. Expert Guidance: Working with experienced cloud migration experts can provide the guidance needed to navigate complex migrations successfully.

Simplyblock and Cloud Migration

Introduction to Simplyblock

Simplyblock offers advanced AWS storage orchestration solutions designed to enhance the performance and reliability of cloud workloads. Simplyblock integrates seamlessly with AWS, making it easy to use their advanced storage solutions in conjunction with AWS services.

Key Benefits of using Simplyblock for Cloud Migration

1. Enhanced Performance: simplyblock’s advanced storage solutions deliver superior performance, reducing latency and increasing IOPS for your workloads, offering the benefits of storage tiering, thin provisioning, and multi-attach that are not commonly available in the cloud while a standard in private cloud data centers.
2. Improved Cost Efficiency: simplyblock helps you optimize storage costs while maintaining high performance, making cloud migration more cost-effective. You don’t have to pay more for storage in the cloud compared to your SAN system in private cloud.
3. Increased Reliability: simplyblock’s storage solutions offer high durability and reliability, ensuring your data is secure and available when you need it. You can optimize data durability to your needs. Simplyblock offers full flexibility in how the storage is orchestrated and provides various Disaster Recovery and Cybersecurity protection options.

Best Practices for Cloud Migration with Simplyblock

Pre-Migration Preparations

Assessing Storage Needs: Evaluate your storage requirements to choose the right simplyblock solutions for your migration. Data Backup Strategies: Implement robust data backup strategies to protect your data during the migration process.

Migration Execution

Using simplyblock Tools: Leverage simplyblock’s tools to streamline the migration process and ensure a smooth transition. Monitoring Progress: Continuously monitor the migration to identify and address any issues promptly.

Post-Migration Tips

Optimizing Performance: Optimize your workloads post-migration to ensure they are running at peak performance. Ensuring Data Security: Maintain stringent security measures to protect your data in the cloud environment.

Simplyblock integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing robust storage solutions that complement the AWS Workload Migration Program. Optimize your cloud journey with simplyblock.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the AWS Workload Migration Program?

The AWS Workload Migration Program is a comprehensive framework designed to help organizations migrate their workloads to the AWS cloud efficiently and effectively.

How does Simplyblock Integrate with AWS?

Simplyblock integrates seamlessly with AWS, providing advanced storage solutions that enhance performance and reliability during and after migration.

What are the Key Benefits of using Simplyblock for Cloud Migration?

Using simplyblock for cloud migration offers enhanced performance, improved cost efficiency, and increased reliability, ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.

How can Simplyblock Improve the Performance of Migrated Workloads?

Simplyblock can help lowerign access latency and providing high density of IOPS/GB, ensuring efficient data handling and superior performance for migrated workloads.

What are some Common Challenges in Cloud Migration and how does Simplyblock Address Them?

Common challenges in cloud migration include data security concerns and compatibility issues. Simplyblock addresses these challenges with robust security features, seamless AWS integration, and advanced storage solutions.

How Simplyblock can be used with Workload Migration Program

When migrating workloads to AWS, simplyblock can significantly optimize your storage infrastructure and reduce costs.

simplyblock is a cloud storage orchestration platform that optimizes AWS database storage costs by 50-75% . It offers a single interface to various storage services, combining the high performance of local NVMe disks with the durability of S3 storage. Savings are mostly achieved by:

1. Data reduction: Eliminating storage that you provision and pay for but do not use (thin provisioning)
2. Intelligent tiering: Optimizing data placement for cost and performance between various storage tiers (NVMe, EBS, S3, Glacier, etc)
3. Data efficiency features: Reducing data duplication on storage via multi-attach and deduplication

All services are accessible via a single logical interface (Kubernetes CSI or NVMe), fully abstracting cloud storage complexity from the database.

Our technology employs NVMe over TCP to deliver minimal access latency, high IOPS/GB, and efficient CPU core utilization, outperforming both local NVMe disks and Amazon EBS in cost/performance ratio at scale. It is particularly well-suited for high-performance Kubernetes environments, combining the low latency of local storage with the scalability and flexibility necessary for dynamic AWS EKS deployments . This ensures optimal performance for I/O-sensitive workloads like databases. Simplyblock also uses erasure coding (a more efficient alternative to RAID) to reduce storage overhead while maintaining data safety and fault tolerance, further lowering storage costs without compromising reliability.

Simplyblock offers features such as instant snapshots (full and incremental), copy-on-write clones, thin provisioning, compression, and encryption. These capabilities provide various ways to optimize your cloud costs. Start using simplyblock today and experience how it can enhance your AWS migration strategy . Simplyblock is available on AWS Marketplace.

The post What is the AWS Workload Migration Program and how simplyblock can help you with cloud migration? appeared first on simplyblock.

When it comes to container orchestration on AWS, two primary services come to mind: Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) . Both offer robust solutions for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications, but each has its unique strengths and ideal use cases. Choosing the right service is crucial for optimizing performance, cost, and management efficiency.

Understanding AWS’ Amazon EKS

Overview of AWS EKS

Amazon EKS is AWS’ managed Kubernetes service, which simplifies running Kubernetes on AWS without the need to install and operate your own Kubernetes control plane or worker nodes. Kubernetes, an open-source container orchestration platform, automates the deployment, scaling, and operation of application containers.

Key Features of AWS EKS

Managed Kubernetes Control Plane : AWS handles the control plane management, ensuring high availability and security.

Integration with AWS Services : Seamless integration with other AWS services such as IAM, VPC, and CloudWatch.

Scalability : Supports both horizontal and vertical scaling, making it suitable for varying workload demands.

Security : Provides features like IAM roles for service accounts, enabling granular access control.

Benefits of using AWS EKS

Simplified Kubernetes Management : Reduces the operational burden of managing Kubernetes clusters.

Flexibility : Offers the flexibility to run Kubernetes-native applications and leverage the Kubernetes ecosystem.

High Availability : Ensures your control plane is spread across multiple AWS Availability Zones.

Understanding Amazon ECS

Overview of Amazon ECS

Amazon ECS is AWS’ native container orchestration service that supports Docker containers and allows you to run applications on a managed cluster of Amazon EC2 instances. It provides a highly scalable, high-performance orchestration service deeply integrated with the AWS ecosystem.

Key Features of AWS ECS

Native AWS Integration : Deep integration with AWS services like IAM, CloudWatch, and AWS Fargate.

Task Definitions : Define containers and their configurations through JSON task definition files.

Service Management : Allows you to maintain application availability and enables service discovery.

Benefits of using AWS ECS

Ease of Use : Simplifies the process of running and managing Docker containers.

Performance : Optimized for performance within the AWS ecosystem .

Cost-Effectiveness : Can be more cost-effective due to its integration with AWS services and straightforward pricing.

Comparing AWS EKS and ECS

Architecture – Kubernetes Vs. Native AWS:

EKS : Provides Kubernetes, an open-source platform, offering flexibility and a wide range of capabilities.

ECS : A native AWS service designed for seamless integration with other AWS offerings and hiding the complexity of managing a Kubernetes-alike infrastructure.

Deployment and Management – Complexity and Learning Curve:

EKS : Requires understanding of Kubernetes concepts, which might be more challenging for some teams.

ECS* : Easier to set up and manage, especially for users familiar with AWS.

Performance – Scalability and Efficiency:

EKS : Supports Kubernetes-native scaling solutions. ECS : Offers native scaling within AWS, including integration with AWS Auto Scaling.

Pricing Models:

EKS : Charges for the Kubernetes control plane and the compute resources (EC2 or Fargate).

ECS : No control plane costs; you pay only for the underlying compute resources.

Customization and Configurability:

EKS : Highly customizable through Kubernetes tools and extensions. ECS : Integrates well with AWS services but is little flexibility with third-party tools.

Security Features and Compliance:

Both : Offer strong security features like IAM roles and VPC integration. EKS : Additional security configurations specific to Kubernetes, like network policies.

Use Cases for Amazon EKS

When to Choose Amazon EKS

EKS is ideal for organizations already invested in Kubernetes or those requiring extensive customization and flexibility. It’s suitable for complex applications that benefit from the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Example Scenarios and Applications

Microservices Architectures : Leveraging Kubernetes’ robust orchestration capabilities.

Hybrid Deployments : Integrating on-premises Kubernetes clusters with cloud-based clusters.

Use Cases for Amazon ECS

When to Choose Amazon ECS

ECS is perfect for users seeking simplicity and tight integration with AWS services. It’s a great choice for straightforward containerized applications that don’t require extensive third-party integrations.

Example Scenarios and Applications

Batch Processing : Running large-scale batch processing tasks efficiently.

Web Applications : Deploying and managing web applications with minimal overhead.

Integration with other AWS Services

How EKS Integrates with other AWS Services

EKS integrates seamlessly with services like IAM for access control, CloudWatch for logging and monitoring, and ELB for load balancing.

How ECS Integrates with other AWS Services

ECS offers deep integration with AWS services such as IAM, CloudWatch, and AWS Fargate, providing a cohesive environment for container management.

Developer and Operations Experience

Ease of Use for Developers: EKS might require more setup and configuration due to Kubernetes’ complexity. ECS offers a more straightforward experience, especially for developers familiar with AWS.

Operations and Maintenance Considerations: EKS requires managing Kubernetes updates and configurations, while ECS offloads much of this operational overhead to AWS, simplifying maintenance.

Community and Support

Community Support for EKS: EKS benefits from the extensive Kubernetes community, providing numerous resources, plugins, and tools.

Community Support for ECS: ECS has strong support within the AWS community, with extensive documentation and integration guides.

AWS Support and Documentation Both services offer comprehensive AWS support and documentation, ensuring users can find the help they need.

Case Studies

Companies using AWS EKS

Snap Inc. : Utilizes EKS for scalable, reliable infrastructure. Intuit : Leverages EKS for Kubernetes-based application deployments.

Companies using AWS ECS

Samsung : Uses ECS for efficient container management. GE (General Electric) : Employs ECS for scalable, containerized applications.

Conclusion

Choosing between the AWS’ services Amazon EKS and Amazon ECS depends on your specific needs and expertise. EKS offers greater flexibility and integration with Kubernetes’ extensive ecosystem, making it ideal for complex applications. ECS provides a simpler, more integrated experience within the AWS ecosystem, suitable for straightforward containerized applications.

Save up to 80% on Amazon EBS Costs simplyblock can help you reduce your Amazon EBS storage costs by up to 80% through high-performance cloud block storage and seamless integration with local NVMe, EBS, and S3.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the Main Differences between Amazon EKS and ECS?

AWS EKS uses Kubernetes, providing extensive customization and flexibility, while ECS is a native AWS service offering simpler management and tighter AWS integration.

Which Service is more Cost-effective?

ECS can be more cost-effective due to its straightforward pricing model, whereas EKS involves additional costs for the Kubernetes control plane.

Can i Migrate from ECS to EKS Easily?

Migrating from ECS to EKS can be complex due to the differences in orchestration and management, but AWS provides tools and documentation to facilitate the process.

Is EKS better for Large-scale Applications?

EKS is often better for large-scale applications requiring extensive customization and flexibility, leveraging Kubernetes’ capabilities.

How does AWS Support Differ for EKS and ECS?

Both services offer robust AWS support and documentation, with EKS benefiting from the broader Kubernetes community and ECS from the AWS community.

How can Simplyblock Enhance your AWS EKS or ECS Deployments?

AWS Marketplace storage solutions, such as simplyblock can help reduce your database costs on AWS by up to 80% . Simplyblock offers high-performance cloud block storage that enhances the performance of your databases and applications. This ensures you get better value and efficiency from your cloud resources.

Simplyblock software provides a seamless bridge between local NVMe disk, Amazon EBS, and Amazon S3, integrating these storage options into a single, cohesive system designed for the ultimate scale and performance of IO-intensive stateful workloads. By combining the high performance of local NVMe storage with the reliability and cost-efficiency of EBS (gp2 and gp3 volumes) and S3 respectively, simplyblock enables enterprises to optimize their storage infrastructure for stateful applications, ensuring scalability, cost savings, and enhanced performance. With simplyblock, you can save up to 80% on your EBS costs on AWS.

Our technology uses NVMe over TCP for minimal access latency, high IOPS/GB, and efficient CPU core utilization, outperforming local NVMe disks and Amazon EBS in cost/performance ratio at scale . Ideal for high-performance Kubernetes environments, simplyblock combines the benefits of local-like latency with the scalability and flexibility necessary for dynamic AWS EKS deployments , ensuring optimal performance for I/O-sensitive workloads like databases. By using erasure coding (a better RAID) instead of replicas, simplyblock minimizes storage overhead while maintaining data safety and fault tolerance. This approach reduces storage costs without compromising reliability.

Simplyblock also includes additional features such as instant snapshots (full and incremental), copy-on-write clones, thin provisioning, compression, encryption, and many more – in short, there are many ways in which simplyblock can help you optimize your cloud costs. Get started using simplyblock right now and see how simplyblock can help you on the AWS Marketplace. Simplyblock is available on AWS marketplace .

The post Amazon EKS vs. ECS: Understanding the Differences and Choosing the Right Service appeared first on simplyblock.

Storage optimization in AWS presents unique challenges. Organizations frequently overprovision Amazon EBS volumes, leading to poor utilization rates averaging just 30%. Meanwhile, the complexity of managing multiple storage types – from high-performance io2 volumes to cost-effective S3 buckets – can make it difficult to implement effective tiering strategies. For companies running databases and data-intensive applications, these challenges are particularly acute.

This guide explores proven best practices for AWS storage optimization, focusing on key areas including:

• Strategic storage provisioning and capacity planning
• Effective use of storage tiers and volume types
• Performance optimization techniques
• Cost reduction strategies through improved resource utilization
• Automated storage management and monitoring

Whether you’re running managed database services, operating observability platforms, or managing enterprise applications, these optimization strategies can help you achieve the ideal balance of performance, cost, and operational efficiency in your AWS environment.

Introduction to AWS Storage

What is AWS Storage?

AWS Storage refers to the various cloud storage solutions provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). Core AWS Storage services are S3, EBS and EFS. These services enable users to store, manage, and retrieve data over the internet, offering scalable and secure storage options tailored to different needs. AWS Storage solutions are integral for businesses and developers who require reliable, high-performance storage that can grow with their demands.

Why is AWS Storage Important?

AWS Storage services are crucial for managing vast amounts of data efficiently. It provides flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, making it suitable for a wide range of applications—from simple data backup to complex data analytics and high-performance computing. Understanding AWS Storage types and costs helps businesses optimize their data management strategies and budgets.

AWS Storage offers scalable, secure, and cost-effective solutions for all your data management needs.

AWS Storage Types: Overview and Use Cases

Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

What it is: Block-level storage volumes attached to EC2 instances, behaving like physical hard drives.

Pros:

• High performance with low latency (especially io2)
• Consistent I/O performance
• Supports live configuration changes
• Automatic replication within AZ
• Supports snapshots and encryption

Cons:

• Limited to single AZ
• Can only attach to one instance (except multi-attach io2)
• Relatively expensive, especially for high IOPS
• Pay for provisioned capacity, not used capacity
• Volume size changes limited to every 6 hours

Best for:

• Database storage
• Boot volumes
• Enterprise applications requiring consistent I/O
• Development and test environments

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

What it is: Highly durable object storage service accessible via HTTP/HTTPS.

Pros:

• Unlimited storage capacity
• 99.999999999% durability
• Cross-region availability
• Multiple storage tiers
• Pay only for what you use
• Highly scalable and cost-effective

Cons:

• Higher latency than block storage
• Not suitable for operating systems or databases
• Can be expensive for frequent data access
• Object size limitations
• No file system interface

Best for:

• Static website hosting
• Backup and archive
• Data lakes
• Content distribution
• Application assets

Local Instance Storage

What it is: Physical storage attached to EC2 instance hardware.

Pros:

• Extremely low latency
• Very high IOPS
• No additional cost beyond instance price
• Ideal for temporary storage
• Highest performance option

Cons:

• Data lost when instance stops
• Cannot be detached/reattached
• Size limited by instance type
• No replication or backup
• No data persistence

Best for:

• Cache storage
• Temporary processing
• High-performance scratch space
• Buffer/queue storage
• Instance-specific workloads

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

What it is: Fully managed NFS file system for EC2 instances.

Pros:

• Shared access across multiple instances
• Automatic scaling
• Cross-AZ replication
• Pay for used storage only
• Linux-compatible file system

Cons:

• Higher latency than EBS
• More expensive than S3
• Limited to Linux workloads
• Performance scales with size
• Regional service only

Best for:

• Shared file storage
• Content management systems
• Development environments
• Web serving
• Analytics applications

Comparing AWS Storage Types: A Deep Dive

Amazon EBS vs Local Instance Storage (NVMe)

Performance Characteristics:

• EBS:
  • 200-500μs latency for io2
  • Limited IOPS (64,000 max per volume)
  • Network-attached storage with consistent performance
  • Bandwidth limited by network
• Local NVMe:
  • Ultra-low latency (100μs or less)
  • Very high IOPS (millions possible)
  • Direct-attached storage
  • No network bandwidth limitations

Durability & Availability:

• EBS:
  • 99.8-99.9% durability
  • Persists independently of instance
  • Survives instance stops/starts
  • Supports snapshots
• Local NVMe:
  • Ephemeral storage
  • Data lost on instance stop
  • No built-in replication
  • No snapshot support

Amazon EBS vs S3

Performance Characteristics:

• EBS:
  • Low latency (milliseconds)
  • Block-level access
  • Consistent I/O performance
  • Limited to single AZ
• S3:
  • Higher latency (tens of milliseconds)
  • Object-level access
  • Unlimited scale
  • Global access

Cost Structure:

• EBS:
  • Pay for provisioned capacity
  • Additional IOPS costs for io2
  • Snapshot storage costs
  • Cross-AZ data transfer fees
• S3:
  • Pay for used storage only
  • Tiered pricing based on volume
  • Access frequency pricing options
  • Cheaper for large datasets

Local NVMe vs S3

Use Case Optimization:

• Local NVMe:
  • High-performance databases
  • Real-time analytics
  • Cache layers
  • Temporary processing
• S3:
  • Long-term storage
  • Data lakes
  • Static content
  • Backup/archive

Management Overhead:

• Local NVMe:
  • Requires careful capacity planning
  • No built-in data protection
  • Instance type dependent
  • Complex redundancy needs
• S3:
  • Fully managed service
  • Built-in redundancy
  • Automatic scaling
  • Lifecycle management

Choosing the Right Storage Type

For Database Workloads:

1. High-Performance Requirements:
   • Primary: Local NVMe
   • Secondary: EBS io2
   • Archive: S3
2. Cost-Sensitive Applications:
   • Primary: EBS gp3
   • Secondary: S3
   • Archive: S3 Glacier

For Analytics Workloads:

1. Real-time Analytics:
   • Hot data: Local NVMe
   • Warm data: EBS
   • Cold data: S3
2. Batch Processing:
   • Processing: Local NVMe
   • Source data: S3
   • Results: EBS/S3

Implementing AWS storage solutions tailored to your specific needs ensures you get the most out of your cloud investment.

Understanding AWS Storage Challenges

Storage optimization in AWS presents several key challenges that organizations must address:

• Underutilization: Organizations frequently overprovision Amazon EBS volumes, leading to poor utilization rates averaging just 30%
• Complex Management: Balancing multiple storage types, from high-performance io2 volumes to cost-effective S3 buckets
• Performance Tradeoffs: Finding the right balance between cost and performance for different workload types
• Scaling Costs: Managing growing storage expenses as data volumes expand

AWS Storage Pricing and Cost Optimization

Understanding AWS Storage Costs

AWS storage pricing encompasses multiple components that organizations must carefully consider. At its core, storage costs are based on the volume of data stored, with pricing varying significantly across different storage types. While S3 charges for actual usage, EBS volumes bill for provisioned capacity regardless of utilization. This distinction becomes crucial for cost optimization strategies.

Data transfer costs represent another significant component of storage expenses. AWS charges for data movement between regions and from AWS to the internet, though transfers into AWS and within the same region are typically free or lower cost. Organizations should carefully architect their applications to minimize costly cross-region data transfers.

Request and retrieval costs, while often overlooked, can substantially impact the total storage bill. Services like S3 charge for both PUT/GET operations, while Glacier adds retrieval fees based on speed requirements. Understanding these operational costs is crucial for accurately forecasting storage expenses.

Cost Estimation and Management

The AWS Pricing Calculator serves as an invaluable tool for projecting storage costs before deployment. Organizations can model different scenarios, comparing costs across storage types and usage patterns. This proactive approach helps avoid unexpected expenses and enables better budgeting decisions.

Regular bill analysis provides insights into actual storage usage patterns and costs. AWS Cost Explorer and detailed billing reports help identify cost drivers, unused resources, and opportunities for optimization. Monthly reviews of these reports should be standard practice for effective cost management.

AWS Storage Optimization Strategies

Selecting the appropriate storage type for each workload represents one of the most effective cost optimization strategies. For instance, frequently accessed data might justify the higher costs of EBS io2 volumes, while rarely accessed data could be more cost-effectively stored in S3 Glacier. Understanding access patterns and performance requirements enables informed decision-making.

Lifecycle policies automate the movement of data between storage tiers based on age or access patterns. For example, moving infrequently accessed data from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier after 90 days can significantly reduce storage costs while maintaining data accessibility when needed.

Data compression and deduplication technologies can substantially reduce storage requirements and costs. Modern compression algorithms offer excellent compression ratios with minimal performance impact, making them particularly valuable for large datasets or backup storage.

Ongoing Management

Regular storage audits should be a cornerstone of any cost optimization strategy. These reviews help identify orphaned snapshots, unused volumes, and opportunities for storage consolidation. Organizations should establish processes for regular cleanup and right-sizing of storage resources.

Implementing proper tagging and monitoring strategies enables better cost allocation and usage tracking. Tags help attribute costs to specific projects or departments, while monitoring helps identify usage patterns and potential cost optimization opportunities. This data-driven approach ensures storage resources are used efficiently and cost-effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is the Cheapest AWS Storage Option?

Amazon Glacier is the most cost-effective storage option for long-term archival needs, though it has higher retrieval costs compared to other services.

How can i Reduce my AWS Storage Costs?

To reduce costs, choose the appropriate storage type, use lifecycle policies to transition data to lower-cost storage, compress data, and regularly review your storage usage.

What is the Difference between S3 and EBS?

S3 is an object storage service suitable for storing and retrieving any amount of data, while EBS provides block storage for use with EC2 instances, offering high performance and low latency.

How do i Estimate AWS Storage Costs?

Estimate costs using the AWS Pricing Calculator, which factors in storage type, amount of data, data transfer, and retrieval requests. Review your AWS bill for accurate cost management.

Can i use Multiple AWS Storage Types Together?

No, you can’t use multiple AWS storage types together for a single workload. You can however use simplyblock orchestration to combine NVMe disk, EBS and S3 in a single solution.

Simplyblock integrates seamlessly with AWS storage services, offering cost-efficient yet high-performance cloud storage at scale in a single solution.

How Simplyblock Can Be Used To Optimize AWS Storage Cost?

Simplyblock can help you optimize AWS storage costs and utilize various AWS storage types effectively by providing a seamless bridge between local NVMe disk, Amazon EBS, and Amazon S3, integrating these storage options into a single, cohesive system designed for ultimate scale and performance of IO-intensive stateful workloads. By combining the high performance of local NVMe storage with the reliability and cost-efficiency of EBS and S3 respectively, simplyblock enables enterprises to optimize their storage infrastructure for stateful applications, ensuring scalability, cost savings, and enhanced performance. With simplyblock, you can save up to 80% on your EBS costs on AWS.

Ideal for high-performance Kubernetes environments, simplyblock combines the benefits of local-like latency with the scalability and flexibility necessary for dynamic AWS EKS deployments, ensuring optimal performance for I/O-sensitive workloads like databases. Using erasure coding (a better RAID) instead of replicas helps to minimize storage overhead without sacrificing data safety and fault tolerance. Simplyblock uses NVMe over TCP for minimal access latency, high IOPS/GB, and efficient CPU core utilization, surpassing local NVMe disks and Amazon EBS in cost/performance ratio at scale. Moreover, simplyblock can be used alongside various AWS storage types, ensuring a versatile storage solution.

Additional features such as instant snapshots (full and incremental), copy-on-write clones, thin provisioning, compression, encryption, and many more, simplyblock meets your requirements before you set them. Get started using simplyblock right now or learn more about our feature set. Simplyblock is available on AWS Marketplace.

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Overview of AWS Marketplace AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog that allows customers to find, buy, and deploy software and services that run on Amazon Web Services (AWS) . It’s designed to simplify the software procurement process for organizations, making it easier to access a vast array of solutions tailored to various business needs.

Importance of AWS Marketplace The AWS Marketplace plays a critical role in the cloud ecosystem by providing a centralized platform where buyers and sellers can interact seamlessly. It eliminates the complexity associated with traditional software procurement, offering a streamlined approach that saves time and resources.

What is AWS Marketplace? AWS Marketplace is a digital catalog offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software, data, and services that run on AWS. It serves as a platform where software vendors can list their products and services, making it easier for AWS customers to discover and utilize a wide range of tools and solutions that complement their cloud infrastructure.

How many products are in AWS Marketplace? As of 2024, the AWS Marketplace featured around 42,240 products and services, with 11,478 in infrastructure software. It’s a digital catalog where independent software vendors can list their offerings. Current offerings can be seen here .

Key Features of AWS Marketplace

• Extensive Software Catalog : AWS Marketplace offers an extensive catalog of software listings across various categories, including security, networking, storage, machine learning, and DevOps. Users can browse thousands of products from leading software vendors, ensuring they find the right tools for their specific requirements.
• Simplified Procurement Process : The procurement process in AWS Marketplace is designed to be straightforward and efficient. Users can quickly find and purchase software with a few clicks, avoiding lengthy negotiations and paperwork. The streamlined process helps organizations adopt new technologies faster.
• Integrated Billing : AWS Marketplace integrates billing with AWS accounts, allowing users to consolidate their software and cloud infrastructure expenses into a single invoice. This simplifies financial management and provides clear visibility into spending.

Benefits of using AWS Marketplace

Cost Efficiency

• Pay-as-you-go Pricing : One of the major advantages of AWS Marketplace is its pay-as-you-go pricing model. Users only pay for what they use, avoiding upfront costs and minimizing financial risk. This model is particularly beneficial for startups and small businesses with limited budgets.
• Free Trials and Discounts : Many products on AWS Marketplace offer free trials and discounts, enabling users to test solutions before committing to a purchase. These offers help organizations make informed decisions and maximize their return on investment.

Ease of Deployment

• One-Click Deployments: AWS Marketplace supports one-click deployments, allowing users to quickly deploy software solutions with minimal effort. This feature accelerates time-to-market and reduces the complexity of setting up new systems.
• Pre-configured Solutions: The marketplace provides pre-configured solutions that are optimized for AWS environments. These solutions come with best practice configurations, ensuring optimal performance and security.

With AWS Marketplace, you can shorten procurement times, implement the controls you need to operate with confidence, and enable your organization to unlock innovation.

Enhanced Security

• Compliance with Industry Standards: Security is a top priority for AWS Marketplace. All products listed in the marketplace comply with industry standards and best practices, ensuring that users can trust the solutions they deploy.
• Secure Transactions: AWS Marketplace ensures secure transactions through rigorous vetting processes for sellers and robust encryption technologies . Users can confidently purchase software without worrying about security risks.

How AWS Marketplace Works

• Browsing the Catalog: Users can browse the AWS Marketplace catalog by category, vendor, or keyword. The intuitive search functionality helps users quickly find the software that meets their needs.
• Subscribing to Products: Once users find a product they want, they can subscribe to it directly through the marketplace. The subscription process is simple and transparent, with clear pricing and terms.
• Deploying Solutions: After subscribing, users can deploy solutions directly from the AWS Management Console . The deployment process is automated and integrates seamlessly with existing AWS infrastructure.
• Managing Subscriptions: AWS Marketplace provides tools for managing subscriptions, including tracking usage, monitoring costs, and renewing or canceling subscriptions as needed.

Types of Products available on AWS Marketplace

• Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS products in AWS Marketplace offer cloud-based applications that users can access over the Internet. These solutions cover a wide range of business needs, from CRM to project management.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS products provide virtualized computing resources over the internet. Users can purchase and deploy servers, storage, and networking components to build and manage their IT infrastructure.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS products offer a platform for developing, testing, and deploying applications. These solutions provide the necessary tools and frameworks, reducing the complexity of application development.
• Professional Services: AWS Marketplace also includes professional services such as consulting, implementation, and training. These services help organizations effectively leverage AWS solutions and achieve their business goals.
  

AWS Marketplace for Buyers

• Finding the Right Solutions: Buyers can use various filters and search criteria to find the right solutions for their needs. Detailed product descriptions, specifications, and pricing information are available to aid decision-making.
• Comparing Products: AWS Marketplace allows AWS buyers to compare multiple products side by side. This feature helps users evaluate different options based on features, pricing, and user reviews.
• Reading Reviews and Ratings: User reviews and ratings provide valuable insights into the performance and reliability of products. Buyers can read feedback from other users to make informed purchasing decisions.

AWS Marketplace for Sellers

• Listing Products: Sellers can list their products on AWS Marketplace by creating detailed product pages that highlight key features and benefits. The listing process is straightforward and provides access to a global audience.
• Managing Listings: AWS Marketplace offers tools for managing product listings, including updating product information, monitoring sales performance, and responding to customer inquiries.
• Accessing Sales Reports: Sellers can access detailed sales reports that provide insights into revenue, customer demographics, and product performance. These reports help AWS sellers optimize their offerings and marketing strategies.

Integration with other AWS Services

• AWS CloudFormation : AWS CloudFormation integration allows users to automate the deployment of AWS Marketplace products using infrastructure as code. This ensures consistent and repeatable deployments.
• AWS CloudTrail : Integration with AWS CloudTrail enables users to track and audit actions taken on AWS Marketplace products. This enhances security and compliance by providing detailed logs of all activities.
• AWS CloudWatch : AWS CloudWatch integration provides monitoring and logging for AWS Marketplace products. Users can set up alerts and dashboards to track the performance and health of their deployed solutions.

Conclusion

AWS Marketplace is an essential tool for organizations looking to streamline their software procurement and deployment processes. With its extensive catalog, simplified procurement, and integrated billing, AWS Marketplace offers unmatched convenience and efficiency. The platform’s cost-effective pricing models, ease of deployment, and enhanced security measures make it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small business looking for affordable solutions or a large enterprise seeking scalable software, AWS Marketplace has something to offer.

Moreover, AWS Marketplace’s seamless integration with other AWS services ensures that users can fully leverage their AWS environment, enhancing overall productivity and performance. AWS Marketplace fosters a vibrant ecosystem that drives innovation and growth by providing a centralized platform for buyers and sellers.

AWS Marketplace is more than just a digital catalog ; it’s a comprehensive solution that empowers businesses to quickly and efficiently adopt the software and services they need to succeed in today’s fast-paced digital landscape. Explore AWS Marketplace today and discover how it can transform your approach to software procurement and deployment.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How do i get Started with AWS Marketplace?

To get started with AWS Marketplace, sign in to your AWS account, browse the catalog, and select the products you want to subscribe to. Follow the prompts to complete the subscription and deployment process.

Are there any Costs associated with using AWS Marketplace?

While browsing the AWS Marketplace catalog is free, you will incur costs when you subscribe to and deploy products. Each product has its pricing model, which may include pay-as-you-go, subscription, or one-time fees.

How Secure is AWS Marketplace?

AWS Marketplace is highly secure, with all products adhering to industry standards and best practices. AWS uses robust encryption and security measures to protect transactions and customer data.

Can i Cancel my Subscription at any Time?

Yes, you can cancel your subscription to any product on AWS Marketplace at any time. The cancellation process is straightforward, and you will only be billed for the usage up to the cancellation date.

What Support Options are available for AWS Marketplace Users?

AWS Marketplace users have access to various support options, including detailed documentation, customer support from vendors, and AWS support plans that provide technical assistance and guidance.

How can Simplyblock be used with AWS Marketplace?

AWS Marketplace storage solutions, such as simplyblock can help reducing your database costs on AWS up to 80% . Simplyblock offers high-performance cloud block storage that enhances the performance of your databases and applications. This ensures you get better value and efficiency from your cloud resources.

Simplyblock software provides a seamless bridge between local NVMe disk, Amazon EBS, and Amazon S3, integrating these storage options into a single, cohesive system designed for ultimate scale and performance of IO-intensive stateful workloads. By combining the high performance of local NVMe storage with the reliability and cost-efficiency of EBS (gp2 and gp3 volumes) and S3 respectively, simplyblock enables enterprises to optimize their storage infrastructure for stateful applications, ensuring scalability, cost savings, and enhanced performance. With simplyblock, you can save up to 80% on your EBS costs on AWS.

Our technology uses NVMe over TCP for minimal access latency, high IOPS/GB, and efficient CPU core utilization, outperforming local NVMe disks and Amazon EBS in cost/performance ratio at scale. Ideal for high-performance Kubernetes environments, simplyblock combines the benefits of local-like latency with the scalability and flexibility necessary for dynamic AWS EKS deployments , ensuring optimal performance for I/O-sensitive workloads like databases. By using erasure coding (a better RAID) instead of replicas, simplyblock minimizes storage overhead while maintaining data safety and fault tolerance. This approach reduces storage costs without compromising reliability.

Simplyblock also includes additional features such as instant snapshots (full and incremental), copy-on-write clones, thin provisioning, compression, encryption, and many more – in short, there are many ways in which simplyblock can help you optimize your cloud costs. Get started using simplyblock right now and see how simplyblock can help you on the AWS Marketplace . Simplyblock is available on AWS marketplace .

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