NVMe Storage on AWS
AWS offers both local NVMe SSDs (instance store) and network-attached NVMe via EBS. Understanding when to use each — and when to deploy your own NVMe-oF layer — directly impacts storage cost and performance for EC2 and EKS workloads.
NVMe-Equipped Instance Types
| Instance Family | NVMe Characteristics |
|---|---|
| i4i (up to 30TB NVMe) | Storage-optimized: 2M+ IOPS per instance, highest NVMe density |
| c6id / c7gd | Compute-optimized with local NVMe: ideal for analytics, databases |
| r6id / r7iz | Memory-optimized with NVMe: in-memory databases with fast persistence |
| m6id / m7i-flex | General purpose with local NVMe: balanced compute + fast local storage |
| trn1 / p4d | AI accelerators with local NVMe for model checkpointing |
Instance store NVMe volumes are ephemeral — data is lost on stop/terminate. Use for scratch space, caches, or workloads that replicate data to persistent storage (EBS or NVMe-oF).
NVMe-oF/TCP on AWS
For persistent shared NVMe block storage on EC2, deploy an NVMe/TCP storage cluster (e.g. simplyblock) across i4i or c6id instances. The storage nodes expose NVMe namespaces to EC2 compute nodes over the VPC network at 25–40µs latency — 3–5× lower than EBS gp3 (100–500µs typical).
For the NVMe/TCP protocol deep-dive, see nvme-tcp.com → For a full NVMe-oF architecture overview, see the NVMe-oF guide.
Recommended Storage Architecture
| Tier / Use Case | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Ephemeral scratch | EC2 instance store NVMe (fastest, non-persistent) |
| Persistent single-node | EBS io2 Block Express (sub-1ms, 256K IOPS max) |
| Shared cluster (low latency) | NVMe-oF/TCP on EC2 (25–40µs, 1M+ IOPS) |
| EKS PersistentVolumes | NVMe-oF CSI driver or EBS CSI driver |
| Network | AWS ENA (up to 200Gbps on some instances) |
simplyblock: NVMe/TCP storage for AWS
simplyblock deploys as a software-defined NVMe/TCP storage cluster on standard AWS instances. It provides Kubernetes CSI, dynamic provisioning, and sub-40µs persistent block storage — without proprietary hardware or cloud-managed disk limits.
Managed PostgreSQL on AWS
vela.run provides managed PostgreSQL on AWS with NVMe/TCP storage — predictable sub-millisecond query latency without managing your own database infrastructure.
vela.run →