Changes/CloudEC2gp3

EC2 AMIs default to the gp3 EBS volume type

Summary

In Amazon EC2, Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes can be one of several types. These can be specified at volume creation time, including for the default volumes that are created on instance launch. An AMI will have default volumes and volume types configured. Fedora currently defaults to the gp2 volume type. This proposal is to switch to gp3 as the default volume type for Fedora. The gp3 volume type is both more flexible than gp2, and can be up to 20% cheaper per GB.

Owner

• Name: Stewart Smith David Duncan
• Email: trawets@amazon.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 39
• Last updated: 2023-08-22
• devel thread
• FESCo issue: #2974
• Tracker bug: #2185248
• Release notes tracker: #976

Detailed Description

According to https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/general-purpose/ :

Amazon EBS gp3 volumes are the latest generation of general-purpose SSD-based EBS volumes that enable customers to provision performance independent of storage capacity, while providing up to 20% lower price per GB than existing gp2 volumes. With gp3 volumes, customers can scale IOPS (input/output operations per second) and throughput without needing to provision additional block storage capacity. This means customers only pay for the storage they need.

For the default configuration of Fedora 37 AMIs, this means the price per-GB-per-month for the default root volume would be $0.08 rather than $0.10. The default number of provisioned IOPs would increase from 100 with gp2, to 3000 with gp3. For gp2 volumes less than 1TB, they can burst up to 3000 IOPs (see GP2 volume performance), while gp3 volumes provide a constant 3000 IOPs rather than only being able to burst to that number before running out of IO credits.

Feedback

Amazon Linux 2023 has switched to gp3 over the Amazon Linux 2 default of gp2, and we have not received any negative feedback on that change.

Benefit to Fedora

The benefit for Fedora users in EC2 is that of cheaper, more predictable, higher base-IOP, and more flexible IO performance by default. Fedora will also be switching to use the latest generation in general purpose EBS volume, fitting the desire of being First.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

 * Change gp2 to gp3 in AMI registration.

• Other developers: N/A

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Objectives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

No affect on upgrades. Existing volumes remain gp2, and the volume type can be set on instance launch if gp3 is not preferred.

How To Test

No additional testing required beyond normal Fedora testing.

User Experience

This change will be largely transparent to users who take the default configuration, and do not run into IO limits on gp2 volumes today. The change for those users will be purely in reduced costs.

For users who hit the burst limits of gp2, this change will improve IOP throughput to a constant 3000 IOPS.

With the default volume size there is a slight throughput change when going from gp2 to gp3 (128MB/sec to 125MB/sec).

Dependencies

No dependencies

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No

Documentation

EC2 documentation details differences between gp2 and gp3: - https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/general-purpose/ - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/general-purpose.html