[singingcheese]

If you shut down your server you lose the data that was stored on the local drives, no different to DO. If you shut down your droplet on DO you lose the data stored on the local drives (in fact DO now scrubs the disks on shutdown after a recent security screw-up). The only difference is that most folk on AWS use EBS storage (something which DO still doesn't offer) which allows you to have drives which can continue to exist after your server is no more and allows you to attach more storage without getting a bigger server.

It's not rocket science:

instance = virtual server ("droplet" in DO speak)

terminate = shut down

ephemeral store = local disk

An EC2 instance is just a virtual server so anyone who knows Linux, Windows, BSD or even Solaris can "hit the ground running" there too.

[zibit]

When you say shutdown are talking about issuing commands from the command line like 'shutdown now' or 'reboot'? Because with Digital Ocean you DO NOT lose your data when you issue those commands. I know from experience.

[fm2612]

Terminate in EC2 is basically the same as the Destroy call of DO. In both cases you will destroy the data stored locally. Rebooting an EC2 instance will not result in data loss, same as DO.