MSFTCOST05-BP01 Migrate Amazon EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3
General Purpose SSD (gp3) volumes are the latest generation of General Purpose SSD volumes, and the lowest cost SSD volume offered by Amazon EBS. This volume type helps to provide the right balance of price and performance for most applications. It also helps you to scale volume performance independently of volume size. This means that you can provision the required performance with no need to provision additional block storage capacity. Additionally, gp3 volumes offer a 20 percent lower price per GiB than General Purpose SSD (gp2) volumes.
Desired outcome: By migrating Amazon EBS volumes from gp2 to gp3, we aim to achieve a 20% reduction in storage costs while gaining the ability to independently scale volume performance without increasing capacity. This transition will optimize our storage expenses and provide better performance control for our workloads, ultimately resulting in improved cost efficiency without compromising performance requirements.
Common anti-patterns:
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Some organizations maintain large gp2 volumes to achieve higher IOPS, unnecessarily increasing costs. They fail to recognize that gp3 volumes allow separate scaling of IOPS and throughput, potentially leading to significant overspending on storage.
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Some teams might hastily migrate all gp2 volumes to gp3 without analyzing workload-specific performance needs. This can result in performance degradation for applications that require higher baseline performance than what's provided by the default gp3 configuration, leading to potential application issues and the need for retroactive adjustments.
Benefits of establishing this best practice:
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Immediate 20% reduction in per-GiB storage costs compared to gp2 volumes, leading to significant cost savings across the storage infrastructure, especially for large-scale deployments with multiple volumes.
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Independent scaling of IOPS and throughput without increasing volume size, allowing precise performance tuning based on application needs while avoiding unnecessary storage capacity expenses.
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The ability to maintain smaller volume sizes while still achieving desired performance levels eliminates the need to overprovision storage for performance reasons, resulting in more efficient resource utilization and easier capacity management.
Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Medium
Implementation guidance
Begin by identifying all existing gp2 volumes using AWS Cost Explorer or AWS Systems Manager. Create a phased migration plan, prioritizing non-production environments first to validate the performance impact. Use AWS CloudFormation templates or AWS CLI scripts to automate the modification process, ensuring each volume's baseline performance requirements are properly configured during the transition to gp3. Monitor performance metrics through Amazon CloudWatch before and after migration to verify that application performance remains optimal. Include snapshot backups in your migration strategy as a rollback mechanism, and schedule migrations during low-traffic periods to minimize potential impact on business operations.
Implementation steps
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Conduct an inventory analysis using AWS Cost Explorer and Systems Manager to identify all gp2 volumes, documenting their current size, IOPS requirements, and associated workloads.
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Create automated scripts using AWS CLI or Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to modify volumes from gp2 to gp3, including proper configuration of baseline IOPS and throughput based on historical performance data.
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Implement the migration in phases, starting with development and test environments, followed by non-critical production workloads, and finally business-critical applications, with performance validation at each stage.
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Monitor post-migration performance using Amazon CloudWatch metrics and establish a feedback loop to adjust gp3 volume configurations as needed, ensuring optimal performance while maintaining cost savings.
Resources
Related documents:
