CLOUD / A CONCEPT NOTE

Block vs Object Storage

three ways to keep bytes

~70 sec read

Overview · mechanism
pitfall · examples

01 / THE SHORT VERSION

The idea in a few sentences.

Block storage (EBS) attaches raw disk sectors to a single machine (highest performance). Object storage (S3) stores flat files at a URL (unlimited scale, slower access).

02 / FOLLOW THE MECHANISM

How file access differences flow

  1. Block Access

    database reads raw block sectors (0x3A) directly from mounted cloud disk (EBS).

  2. Object Access

    application pulls files by HTTP URL: GET s3://bucket/photo.jpg.

  3. File storage (EFS)

    multiple virtual machines mount the same network folder (NFS) to share assets.

04 / COMMAND NOTES

Read the command, then the result.

Inspect the flags and arguments before trying an example. Snippets can need local setup, replacement values, or resources in your own environment.

EXAMPLE 01 · REFERENCE

list all cloud block storage volumes in the region

aws ec2 describe-volumes

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