As Werner just announced from the stage at AWS re:Invent, we have some great news for users of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). We are planning to support EBS volumes that are larger and faster than ever before! Here are the new specs:

• General Purpose (SSD) – You will be able to create volumes that store up to 16 TB and provide up to 10,000 baseline IOPS (up from 1 TB and 3,000 baseline IOPS). Volumes of this type will continue to support bursting to even higher performance levels (see my post on
  New SSD-Backed Elastic Block Storage for more information).
• Provisioned IOPS (SSD) – You will be able to create volumes that store up to 16 TB and provide up to 20,000 Provisioned IOPS (up from 1 TB and 4,000 Provisioned IOPS).

Newly created volumes will transfer data more than twice as fast, with a maximum throughput of 160 MBps for General Purpose (SSD) and 320 MBps for Provisioned IOPS (SSD).

With more room to store data and the ability to get to it even more rapidly, you can now run demanding, large-scale workloads without having to stripe multiple volumes together or to do a complex dance when it comes time to create and coordinate snapshots. You can just create the volume and turn your attention to your data and your application.

Stay tuned for more information on availability!

— Jeff;