What is the difference between the gp2 and gp3 storage types in Amazon EBS?

The gp2 and gp3 storage types in Amazon EBS are different generations of General Purpose SSD volumes, which differ in performance and cost.

Main differences:

• Performance:

  • gp2 provides up to 16,000 IOPS, with a baseline performance of 3 IOPS per GB.
  • gp3 offers higher performance — up to 16,000 IOPS and 1,000 MB/s throughput, with performance independent of volume size.

• Configurability:

  • gp3 allows separate tuning of IOPS and throughput independently of volume size, providing more control and cost optimization.
  • gp2 performance scales linearly with volume size.

• Cost:

  • gp3 is generally cheaper per GB and allows savings through performance tuning.

Example: if you need a 100 GB volume with 5,000 IOPS, you would need a larger volume with gp2 to achieve the desired performance, whereas with gp3, you can set IOPS separately without increasing the volume size.