AWS Technical Essentials Practice

What is the primary use of Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS)?

1. Stateless Web Hosts

2. Transcoding

3. Caching

4. All of the above

The correct answer is: All of the above

Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is fundamentally designed to provide scalable and high-performance block storage for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Understanding its primary use involves recognizing the capabilities of EBS in supporting various applications. EBS is best known for its ability to persistently store data that can be simultaneously accessed by multiple EC2 instances, making it especially useful for applications that require durable storage with low-latency, such as databases and file systems. This persistent nature allows data to remain intact even when instances are stopped or terminated, which is crucial for stateful applications. While EBS can support stateless web hosts by providing the required storage backend for web applications, it is not primarily optimized for this use case. Stateless web hosting typically utilizes object storage solutions like Amazon S3, which better align with the needs of serving static websites without maintaining a state. Transcoding can leverage EBS to store input and output files for media processing, but it is not the primary use case for EBS. Caching mechanisms often utilize in-memory databases or caching services (like Amazon ElastiCache) that provide faster access than block storage. Thus, while EBS can technically facilitate a range of functions including those mentioned, its primary use is centered around providing reliable