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Amazon DynamoDB vs Amazon EBS: What are the differences?
What is Amazon DynamoDB? Fully managed NoSQL database service. All data items are stored on Solid State Drives (SSDs), and are replicated across 3 Availability Zones for high availability and durability. With DynamoDB, you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available distributed database cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.
What is Amazon EBS? Block level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.
Amazon DynamoDB can be classified as a tool in the "NoSQL Database as a Service" category, while Amazon EBS is grouped under "Cloud Storage".
Some of the features offered by Amazon DynamoDB are:
- Automated Storage Scaling – There is no limit to the amount of data you can store in a DynamoDB table, and the service automatically allocates more storage, as you store more data using the DynamoDB write APIs.
- Provisioned Throughput – When creating a table, simply specify how much request capacity you require. DynamoDB allocates dedicated resources to your table to meet your performance requirements, and automatically partitions data over a sufficient number of servers to meet your request capacity. If your throughput requirements change, simply update your table's request capacity using the AWS Management Console or the Amazon DynamoDB APIs. You are still able to achieve your prior throughput levels while scaling is underway.
- Fully Distributed, Shared Nothing Architecture – Amazon DynamoDB scales horizontally and can seamlessly scale a single table over hundreds of servers.
On the other hand, Amazon EBS provides the following key features:
- Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes from 1 GB to 1 TB that can be mounted as devices by Amazon EC2 instances. Multiple volumes can be mounted to the same instance.
- Amazon EBS enables you to provision a specific level of I/O performance if desired, by choosing a Provisioned IOPS volume. This allows you to predictably scale to thousands of IOPS per Amazon EC2 instance.
- Storage volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices, with user supplied device names and a block device interface. You can create a file system on top of Amazon EBS volumes, or use them in any other way you would use a block device (like a hard drive).
"Predictable performance and cost" is the top reason why over 53 developers like Amazon DynamoDB, while over 34 developers mention "Point-in-time snapshots" as the leading cause for choosing Amazon EBS.
According to the StackShare community, Amazon DynamoDB has a broader approval, being mentioned in 430 company stacks & 173 developers stacks; compared to Amazon EBS, which is listed in 178 company stacks and 47 developer stacks.
We are building a social media app, where users will post images, like their post, and make friends based on their interest. We are currently using Cloud Firestore and Firebase Realtime Database. We are looking for another database like Amazon DynamoDB; how much this decision can be efficient in terms of pricing and overhead?
Hi, Akash,
I wouldn't make this decision without lots more information. Cloud Firestore has a much richer metamodel (document-oriented) than Dynamo (key-value), and Dynamo seems to be particularly restrictive. That is why it is so fast. There are many needs in most applications to get lightning access to the members of a set, one set at a time. Dynamo DB is a great choice. But, social media applications generally need to be able to make long traverses across a graph. While you can make almost any metamodel act like another one, with your own custom layers on top of it, or just by writing a lot more code, it's a long way around to do that with simple key-value sets. It's hard enough to traverse across networks of collections in a document-oriented database. So, if you are moving, I think a graph-oriented database like Amazon Neptune, or, if you might want built-in reasoning, Allegro or Ontotext, would take the least programming, which is where the most cost and bugs can be avoided. Also, managed systems are also less costly in terms of people's time and system errors. It's easier to measure the costs of managed systems, so they are often seen as more costly.
Pros of Amazon DynamoDB
- Predictable performance and cost62
- Scalable56
- Native JSON Support35
- AWS Free Tier21
- Fast7
- No sql3
- To store data3
- Serverless2
- No Stored procedures is GOOD2
- ORM with DynamoDBMapper1
- Elastic Scalability using on-demand mode1
- Elastic Scalability using autoscaling1
- DynamoDB Stream1
Pros of Amazon EBS
- Point-in-time snapshots36
- Data reliability27
- Configurable i/o performance19
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Cons of Amazon DynamoDB
- Only sequential access for paginate data4
- Scaling1
- Document Limit Size1
Cons of Amazon EBS
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