Check the default storage layout of Greenplum Database (GPDB) on Amazon Web Service (AWS)

Products

VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to roughly introduce the default EBS (Elastic Block Storage) layout on AWS EC2 (AWS virtual server in the cloud).

Resolution

When navigating to the AWS marketplace you might notice that there are different instance type options along with different storage infrastructures respectively:
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-piiukzn26stas

For example, if you choose your AWS EC2 instance as 1 x r5.xlarge machine or equivalent, you'll see the underlying storage laid out as:

EBS1: 1 x 32 GB General Purpose SSD
EBS2: 1 x 32 GB General Purpose SSD
EBS3: 1 x 6000 GB

EBS - Elastic Block Storage refers to the logical volume which behaves like raw and unformatted block device on AWS EC2 instance (AWS virtual server in the cloud), to check what the 3 volumes are used for, you can check following:

Throughput Optimized HHD

[root@mdw ~]# lsblk
NAME            MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1         259:2    0   32G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1     259:3    0    1G  0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p2     259:4    0   31G  0 part
  └─centos-root 253:0    0   31G  0 lvm  /
nvme1n1         259:0    0   32G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme2n1         259:1    0  500G  0 disk /data1

So it's easy to tell from above output that the 1st volume was for boot partition and for root directory, the 2nd was for SWAP space, the 3rd, which is the largest volume among them serves for GPDB data directory.

For the other EC2 options, the usage of the volumes could be similar.

Checklist:
When navigating to the AWS marketplace you might notice that there are different instance type options along with different storage infrastructures respectively
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-piiukzn26stas

For example, if you choose your AWS EC2 instance as 1 x r5.xlarge machine or equivalent, you'll see the underlying storage laid out as:

EBS1: 1 x 32 GB General Purpose SSD
EBS2: 1 x 32 GB General Purpose SSD
EBS3: 1 x 6000 GB Throughput Optimized HHD

EBS - Elastic Block Storage refers to the logical volume which behaves like raw and unformatted block device on AWS EC2 instance (AWS virtual server in the cloud), to check what the 3 volumes are used for, you can check following:

[root@mdw ~]# lsblk
NAME            MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
nvme0n1         259:2    0   32G  0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1     259:3    0    1G  0 part /boot
└─nvme0n1p2     259:4    0   31G  0 part
  └─centos-root 253:0    0   31G  0 lvm  /
nvme1n1         259:0    0   32G  0 disk [SWAP]
nvme2n1         259:1    0  500G  0 disk /data1

So it's easy to tell from above output that the 1st volume was for boot partition and for root directory, the 2nd was for SWAP space, the 3rd, which is the largest volume among them serves for GPDB data directory.

For the other EC2 options, the usage of the volumes could be similar.