A team migrating from very old EC2 instance types to current-generation instance types wonders whether they'll need to pay extra and separately enable "EBS-optimized" to get full EBS performance, the way some very old instance types required. What should they know?
- EBS optimization was deprecated and no longer exists as a feature on current-generation instance types
- EBS optimization must still be explicitly enabled and paid for separately on every instance type, old and new alike
- Nearly all current-generation instance types, including all instance types built on the Nitro System, are EBS-optimized by default at no additional charge, unlike some older-generation instance types that required explicitly enabling it (sometimes for an extra fee)
- EBS optimization is now bundled entirely into gp3 pricing, so it depends on volume type rather than instance type
Why C? And why not the others?
Correct answer: C. Nearly all current-generation instance types, including all instance types built on the Nitro System, are EBS-optimized by default at no additional charge, unlike some older-generation instance types that required explicitly enabling it (sometimes for an extra fee)
EBS-optimized instances provide dedicated bandwidth between an EC2 instance and its attached EBS volumes, separate from the instance's general network traffic, and while some older-generation instance types required explicitly enabling this feature (sometimes at an additional hourly charge), nearly all current-generation instance types, including those built on the Nitro System, are EBS-optimized by default at no extra cost, so this migrating team doesn't need to take any special action to get full EBS performance. The option claiming EBS optimization was deprecated is wrong; the capability is very much still present, it has simply become the default rather than an opt-in extra on modern instance types. The option insisting it must still be explicitly enabled and paid for on every instance type ignores exactly the default-and-free behavior that current-generation types now provide. The option claiming it's bundled into gp3 pricing confuses two independent things: EBS optimization is a property of the EC2 instance's dedicated network bandwidth to EBS, not a property or pricing feature of any particular EBS volume type.
Source: AWS EC2 documentation: Amazon EBS–optimized instances — default EBS optimization on Nitro-based instances