What's the difference between the two? It seems as if using an instance store the root drive is ephemeral and EBS isn't in the event of a termination. But, if you're not terminating does it matter? Could someone compare EBS with instance-store and termination turned off? What are the practical differences?
Amazon EBS store vs Instance Store with Termination turned off
amazon ec2amazon-ebsamazon-instance-store
Best Answer
There are several differences, but the most concerning one is that with instance store, if the host crashes, your root volume is gone. With EBS, it resides on different (and redundnat) hardware, so the volume would stick around and you could restart the instance.