AWS Solutions Architect Associate Practice Test

What happens to the data on ephemeral store volumes when an EC2 EBS-backed instance is stopped?

1. Data is automatically saved in an EBS volume.

2. Data is unavailable until the instance is restarted.

3. Data will be deleted and will no longer be accessible.

4. Data is automatically saved as an EBS snapshot.

The correct answer is: Data will be deleted and will no longer be accessible.

When an EC2 EBS-backed instance is stopped, the ephemeral store volumes associated with that instance will have their data deleted and will no longer be accessible. Ephemeral store volumes, also known as instance store volumes, are temporary storage that exists only for the lifecycle of an instance. When the instance is terminated or stopped, all data stored on these ephemeral volumes is lost, similar to how data on a local hard drive would be wiped by shutting down a computer. This behavior is specifically designed for ephemeral storage, as it provides high I/O performance, but is unsuitable for long-term persistence of data. In contrast, Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, which are separate and persistent storage options, are designed to retain data regardless of the instance state. Therefore, any data saved on EBS volumes would remain accessible after stopping the instance, while ephemeral data does not have that advantage. Understanding this distinction is crucial when architecting solutions on AWS where data persistence is needed; it highlights the importance of using EBS volumes for critical data versus choosing ephemeral storage for temporary or transient workloads.