General-purpose SSD storage provides moderate baseline performance with the ability to burst. Use it as the default for medium-load workloads with random access, including EC2 boot volumes and applications with low-to-medium I/O demand. section 8.1.3 section 10.6.1
Choose general-purpose SSD when:
- Your workload performs small, random reads and writes rather than sustained sequential transfers. section 8.1.3
- Moderate baseline performance is sufficient and occasional bursts are useful. section 10.6.1
- You need a production database option without guaranteed high throughput; choose Provisioned IOPS SSD when throughput must be guaranteed. section 10.6.1
Performance depends on workload, I/O size, the provisioned volume, and the EC2 instance's available bandwidth. EBS charges for provisioned capacity even when the volume is not full, so sizing affects cost. section 8.1.3
Web application boot volume
Configure a general-purpose SSD volume as the boot disk for an EC2 web application with low-to-medium, randomly accessed I/O. Check that the instance can supply the required EBS bandwidth before increasing volume performance. section 8.1.3
Table 8.2 How EBS volume types differ (view table figure)
Compare general-purpose SSD with Provisioned IOPS SSD and HDD alternatives by size, throughput, IOPS, bursting, and relative price. section 8.1.3
