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0 pointswebmaven4y ago0 comments

> Does "SAN" imply some specific internal architecture for the storage cluster or something?

It implies purchasing dedicated hardware. SANs are CAPEX heavy solutions.

> And, if so, then what do you call the type of thing that EBS is?

If you insist, you could call EBS a SAN-as-a-Service, I suppose.

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EBS is absolutely SAN-as-a-Service, and it's fantastic.

For a SAN, not only do you have to become a "storage expert", but their individual limitations will leave you with thousands of hours of wasted time and effort, constrain your architecture, and hold back your application's development.

For EBS, you don't need to know anything about storage. You just say "Give me some space and attach it to any VM I want" and you have it. "Expand that space" and you have it. "Give me a snapshot" and you have it. "Give me a bunch of performance guarantees" and you have it. "Make it all encrypted": Done.

You don't need to maintain it, repair it, upgrade it. No maintenance windows to apply a firmware patch. No waiting for someone to buy, deliver, and install a new storage array to get more space. No hoping your hardware has the right interconnects. No upgrading switch backbones to deal with performance issues. And I'm not even a storage person! I'm so happy that I don't deal with SANs anymore.

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