AWS GP2 Vs. GP3 Volumes: A Side-By-Side Comparison

Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) is an efficient and durable block storage service. It is especially great for rapidly changing data on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Besides, Amazon EBS GP volumes promise a balance between performance and cost savings.

In this guide, we see if that is the case. We’ll also tell if switching from your current EBS volume type is worth the while.

What Are GP Volumes In AWS?

GP, or General Purpose volumes, are one type of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes. EBS offers Solid State Drive (SSD), Hard Disk Drive (HDD), and Previous generation volume types. GP volumes are SSD-backed Amazon EBS volumes.

SSD-based volumes include both General Purpose and Provisioned IOPS volumes. Meanwhile, HDD-based options include Throughput Optimized HDDs and Cold HDDs. 

There’s also the Magnetic volume type, a previous-generation volume type.

Each category offers more choices. The goal is often to provide various suitable options for different use cases and budgets.

General Purpose SSD volumes provide two EBS volume types; gp2 and gp3. And what do these gp volumes do? 

Here’s the breakdown …

What Are AWS GP Volumes Used For?

AWS designed Amazon EBS gp volumes to balance IOPS performance and cost savings. Meanwhile, Provisioned IOPS volumes offer the highest performance possible of any SSD-backed EBS volume.

Yet, gp volumes are ideal for many transactional workloads that have a small I/O size and frequent read/write operations.

This makes gp volumes suitable for transactional use cases. These include virtual desktops, interactive gaming apps, development environments (including testing), boot volumes, and single-instance databases.

If your workload requires more than 16,000 IOPS (64 Kibs I/O), you should consider Provisioned IOPS volumes (io1 and io2 Block Express).

If you don’t need all that horsepower, gp volumes will serve you just fine. So, the next question would be; should you choose gp2 or gp3 EBS volumes for your needs?

Consider the following.

Amazon EBS GP2 Vs. GP3 Volumes: Choosing The Best EBS Volume Type (Chart)

Here’s a quick overview of the differences between gp2 and gp3 volumes as offered by AWS.

Table: Gp2 vs GP3 comparison table

Here’s a deeper drive to help you understand what you are getting before switching to any of the two gp volumes.

Amazon EBS gp2 vs gp3 volumes: Performance

We’ll go over the two types of performance attributes (IOPS and throughout) as well as durability and other assurances. 

IOPS performance

A gp2 volume scales linearly with volume size from 100 IOPS to 16,000 IOPS.

Consider this:

A unique feature here is that GP2 volumes can burst performance when needed. This works on the same principle as burst mode for Amazon EC2 T2 instances. 

Gp3 volumes do not support this “burst mode”. Then again, we are about to see if gp3 volumes need to burst at all.

Burst mode improves gp2 volume performance during high demand. The system is based on a credit system. You accumulate credits when your gp2 volumes perform at or under baseline performance. That baseline performance varies by volume size.

When volumes that are smaller than 1 TiB need to perform above baseline I/O performance, the accumulated credits boost performance up to 3,000 IOPS. gp2 volumes provision 100 IOPS as baseline performance by default for volumes that are up to 33.33 GiB. 

For volumes that are between 33.33 GiB and 5,334 GiB, Amazon EBS provisions them with a minimum of 3 IOPS and a maximum of 16,000 IOPS. Anything above that 5,444 GiB runs with 16,000 IOPS.   

When performance drops to the baseline (or lower) I/O rate, the volume earns I/O credits, up to 5.4 million units. These are enough to ramp up IOPS performance above 3,000 IOPS for about 30 minutes. 

This “burst mode” can run longer. How long exactly depends on the amount of I/O credits your workload consumes per second.  

The credits are earned back at a rate of 3 I/O credits per gigabyte of volume size per second. 

Remember, this happens when your volumes run at or below baseline performance for each volume size. So, volumes that are smaller than 33.33 GiB can refill their I/O credit balance in about 15 hours (54,000 seconds).

GP3 volumes lack burst capabilities but offer sustained maximum IOPS performance. Expect baseline performance at 3,000 IOPS regardless of volume size. Thus, gp3 volumes offer higher IOPS performance without requiring more block storage capacity. And we’ll see how this impacts costs in a few moments.

Throughput performance

Likewise, gp3 volumes can sustain a 125 MiB/s baseline throughput at any volume size for no additional cost. You can also ring that up to 1,000 MiB/s for an additional fee (at a 0.25 MiB/s ratio).

Again, throughput performance for gp2 volumes increases or decreases with volume size. The baseline to expect here is 128 MiB/s while maximum throughput is capped at 250 MiB/s. But that’s not everything.

Another note to make is that the 128 MiB/s rate applies to volumes that are up to 170 GiB. If you need to run at the maximum possible throughput of 1,000 MiB/s, your volume will need to be at least 334 GiB.

However, if your volumes are between 170 GiB and 334 GiB, they can burst throughput performance up to 250 MiB/s.

Amazon EBS gp2 vs gp 3 volumes: Pricing

The newer EBS gp3 volumes are 20% cheaper than gp2 volumes. Again, this is consistent with pricing for the latest generation Amazon EC2 instances.

Better still, GP3 volumes allow you to decouple volume size, throughput, and IOPS. And yes, no downtime is required to make these changes.

Now, remember how we said performance scales with volume size for GP2 volumes? 

Well, after 1 TiB, adding more storage doesn’t equal improved performance. Instead, it can lead to overprovisioning. Said another way; an unnecessary cost. Waste.

There are no such issues with gp3 volumes as you can modify the IOPS-to-volume size ratio. gp3 volumes provision performance based on workload requirements, not volume size. No overprovisioning = less waste = cost savings. 

Oh, there’s one more thing.

We mentioned that gp3 volumes are cheaper than gp2 options right off the bat. Here’s how that works.

Pricing for gp3 and gp2 volumes is per GiB-month until capacity is released. The cost is $0.08 per GiB-month at 3,000 IOPS and 125 MiB/s for gp3 volumes compared to $0.10 per GiB-month for gp2 volumes.

If you need higher throughput or IOPS, gp3 volumes can be a suitable option. You can go up to 16,000 IOPS from the standard 3,000 IOPS. But, you’ll need to pay an extra fee of $0.005 per provisioned-month (a ratio of 500 IOPS/GiB of volume size). 

For throughput, you can pay an extra fee of $0.04 per MiB/s to exceed the standard 125 MiB/s throughput.

Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of General Purpose SSD gp volumes in one place.

 Amazon EBS pricing

In conclusion, you can save up to 20% on block storage costs by switching from gp2 to gp3 volumes.

Yet, for workloads with low-intensity transactions, such as single-instance databases and dev environments, gp2 volumes may still be a suitable option.

Medium-intensity transactional workloads can use gp3 volumes to sustain higher performance. Think about interactive applications, performant Hadoop clusters, and virtual desktops here.

That said, using gp3 volumes doesn’t automatically cut unnecessary spending. 

You still need to constantly check your performance (IOPS and throughput) against the provisioned block storage amount to determine the most cost-efficient ratio to adjust.

Besides, you must choose just the right EBS-optimized Amazon EC2 instances for the greatest performance. And how do you know at what point to just use Provisioned SSDs instead of GP volumes altogether?

There’s a way to get around this monitoring mayhem. 

What’s An Efficient Way To Track Amazon EBS Volumes For The Greatest Cost Savings?

CloudZero can help you track your Amazon EBS volume costs in real-time. You get an easy-to-digest cost report. 

CloudZero maps your EBS costs broken down by product, process, and people. By contrast, most cost tools present total and average costs in one big data dump.

But with CloudZero you get to see who, what, and how your Amazon EBS volume costs are changing. You’ll know exactly which attributes to tweak to reduce costs without compromising on performance or customer experience.

Here’s an example. You can get details such as the exact EBS volume’s Volume ID and Sub-account. Then you can use these to decide if switching to a different EBS volume type is worth your time and effort. 

Also, CloudZero compares your EBS costs with other AWS services in one place, such as EBS vs S3 storage costs. No endless tags or separate dashboards are required here.

CloudZero is the first cloud cost optimization platform to provide accurate, hourly, and immediately actionable cost intelligence. These include granular insights such as cost per customer, cost per environment, and cost per I/O request.

And unexpected cloud costs won’t catch you off guard, either. CloudZero sends you timely and contextual cost anomaly alerts. This means you can take swift corrective action to avoid overspending and keep your AWS storage costs in pocket.

Yet, talking about CloudZero is nothing like experiencing it for yourself. Ambitious brands like Drift (saved $2.4 million), New Relic, and Upstart (saved $20 million) already use CloudZero. Want to take CloudZero for a spin risk-free? to experience CloudZero for yourself.  

Amazon EBS Volumes FAQs

What is the difference between IOPS and throughput in storage operations?

While IOPS refers to the number of read/write operations per second, throughput indicates the number of bytes or bits that a storage device can process per second.

What is the main difference between Amazon EBS gp3 and gp2 volumes?

gp2 volumes are burstable on demand while gp3 volumes do not require “burst mode” to deliver optimal performance as demand increases. Gp3 are also a newer, more cost-effective typoe of Amazon EBS General Purpose SSD-backed volumes.   

What is the difference in pricing between gp2 and gp3 volumes in Amazon EBS?

EBS gp3 volumes are designed to deliver higher performance than gp2 volumes for the same block storage capacity, but at 20% cheaper.   

Should you choose gp2 or gp3 Amazon EBS volumes?

This will depend on your use case. It makes sense to use gp3 volumes for medium-intensity applications such as log processing,  interactive applications that demand low latency for extended periods, and Hadoop clusters. Gp2 volumes are ideal for lower-intensity applications such boot volumes and single-instance databases. 

How much can you save with EBS gp3 volumes over gp2?

While gp3 volumes offer up to 20% cost savings over gp2 volumes, exactly how much you can save will depend on your I/O usage per second.

How do I switch from gp2 to gp3 volumes in Amazon EBS?

In AWS CLI, migrate a gp2 to gp3 volume using the modify-volume command. For example, aws  ec2  modify-volume  –volume-type  gp3  –volume id  -volume xxxxxxxxxxxxx. From the Amazon EC2 console, choose Volume > Elastic Block Store > select volume ID to migrate > Modify volume > enter gp3 volume type, size, and throughput > Modify. 

Author: Cody Slingerland

Cody Slingerland, a FinOps certified practitioner, is an avid content creator with over 10 years of experience creating content for SaaS and technology companies. Cody collaborates with internal team members and subject matter experts to create expert-written content on the CloudZero blog.