AWS Certified SysOps Administrator Practice Exam

How can a development team reduce the latency of EBS volumes before moving them to production?

1. Use RAID 0 to maximize utilization of instance resources

2. Initialize the EBS volume or pre-warm it

3. Upgrade the instance type to a larger size

4. Use a higher IOPS provisioned volume

The correct answer is: Initialize the EBS volume or pre-warm it

Initializing or pre-warming an Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume is an effective way to reduce latency before moving it to production. When a new EBS volume is created, it can have uninitialized blocks, which may take time to load when accessed for the first time. By initializing the volume or pre-warming it, the development team ensures that all blocks on the volume are fully written and prepared for immediate access, thereby reducing the latency experienced during the first read or write operations. Pre-warming can be done by performing a sequential write to the entire volume, which forces it to move all data blocks into the cache, making them readily available when the application starts making requests. This proactive step is crucial in production environments where consistent performance and minimal delays are essential. This approach contrasts with options like using RAID 0, which can improve performance but does not specifically address the initialization concern; upgrading the instance type, which can provide more resources but may not inherently reduce EBS latency; and using a higher IOPS provisioned volume, which is a valid strategy for performance but involves increased costs and does not resolve latency issues during the initial use phase of a new volume. Additionally, if the volume is not initialized, even a high IOPS volume can