[perching_aix]

Instance store is also immediately wiped when the instance is halted / restarted, which can theoretically happen at any time, for example by a mystery instance failure, or a patching tool that's helpfully restarting your boxes during offhours.

[slashdev]

My understanding is this not true, only when the instance permanently fails and is moved.

[the8472]

stop or hibernate kills it. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance...

[slashdev]

Yeah, so restart does not.

Which means you can count on it about as much as a server of your own, if you could not repair the server.

I know a database company that uses instance storage as the primary storage. It’s common.

[perching_aix]

Wasn't aware, interesting. I did consider it in the past as well, but the reliability aspect made me consider this as a moonshot rather than anything practical. Kind of weirdly validating to know there are (supposedly) database providers using it.

That said, a good bit of our environments are scheduled, so it still wouldn't be an option there without hacks (e.g. doing a compressed blockwise dump before shutting down and then a blockwise flash on startup).

[slashdev]

I would take a logical dump on shutdown and the restore that rather. You’d need a backup and restore process anyway, so that path has to exist either way. It’s kind of like a full vacuum, so has some benefits too.

The NDA prevents me from saying which database company, but it’s a major provider of cloud managed databases across clouds.