AWS DRS Now Supports Amazon EBS Volume Initialization Rate!

Hey, it's Shii-chan! Today's news is about performance in your disaster recovery environment.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) now supports the Amazon EBS volume initialization rate. This helps recovered volumes reach full performance faster and more predictably during drills and recoveries.

The story so far

When DRS restores EBS volumes from snapshots, the data loads from Amazon S3 in the background. I/O to blocks that haven't loaded yet could be slower until initialization finished. For I/O-intensive workloads like databases, that slowdown could get in the way of meeting recovery time objectives.

What changes

Set a volume initialization rate once on your DRS-managed EC2 launch template, and DRS applies it automatically whenever it creates volumes during recovery. The setting carries over even when the template gets updated for rightsizing or disk changes. If the rate can't be applied for some reason, recovery still completes without being blocked, so you can rely on it with confidence.

Dive Deep

On pricing: you're charged per GB based on the full snapshot size and the rate you specify. It's available in all AWS Regions and environments where the EBS volume initialization rate is offered. Check the Amazon EBS pricing page for full details.

Wrap-up

• AWS DRS now supports setting an EBS volume initialization rate
• Set it once on your EC2 launch template, and DRS applies it automatically during recovery
• The setting survives rightsizing and disk changes; recovery isn't blocked even if the rate can't be applied
• Priced per GB based on snapshot size and the rate you choose
• Good news if you're protecting I/O-intensive workloads like databases with DRS!