Amazon EBS Alternative
Simplyblock, the modern NVMe storage for AWS that outperforms and costs less
Simplyblock intelligently orchestrates and pools Amazon EBS volumes, local NVMe, and S3 storage behind a unified high-performance interface. Through advanced features like thin provisioning, automated S3 tiering, and local NVMe caching, simplyblock dramatically improves performance over standard EBS while reducing storage costs by only charging for actually used capacity and automatically moving cold data to cheaper storage tiers. Simplyblock is your Amazon EBS alternative.
Challenges with Amazon EBS
Cost Inefficiency
EBS volumes must be provisioned with full capacity upfront and paid for regardless of actual usage, leading to significant waste since the average utilization is only 30-40%. Additionally, high-performance configurations with provisioned IOPS become extremely expensive.
Performance Limitations
EBS has relatively high latency (6-10ms) and limited IOPS per volume, with io2 volumes requiring expensive IOPS provisioning. Changes to IOPS or volume size can only be made once every 6 hours, making it difficult to respond to changing performance needs.
Volume Sizing
Managing multiple partially utilized EBS volumes is complicated and time-consuming. Volume resizing requires manual intervention and is restricted by the 6-hour modification limit, often forcing administrators to over-provision "just in case."
Cross-AZ Availability
EBS volumes are restricted to a single availability zone, making high availability and disaster recovery complex and expensive since volumes must be replicated across zones. Additionally, gp3 volumes don't support multi-attach, limiting architecture options for high availability.
What is Simplyblock?
simplyblock revolutionizes cloud storage by unifying EBS volumes, local NVMe, and S3 into an intelligent storage platform that delivers ultra-low latency and automated management through modern NVMe/TCP technology. Unlike EBS, which requires full upfront provisioning and charges for unused space, simplyblock uses thin provisioning to only charge for actual usage while automatically moving cold data to S3, reducing storage costs by up to 75%. simplyblock eliminates EBS performance limitations by pooling volumes for higher IOPS, enabling instant resizing without 6-hour wait periods, and providing native multi-attach capabilities.
Deployment comparison
Simplyblock provides a unified, scalable, and flexible storage solution by pooling and managing multiple types of storage, including Amazon EBS volumes, Amazon S3, and local NVMe instance storage. It uses thin provisioning to optimize capacity utilization and automatically scales the underlying storage pool as needed. Simplyblock offers advanced features like storage tiering, encryption, compression, snapshots, and clones.
In contrast, Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes that can be attached to EC2 instances and Kubernetes containers. EBS volumes are created with a fixed size and require manual resizing. EBS supports features like snapshots and encryption, but lacks capabilities such as thin provisioning, storage pooling, tiering to S3, and instant cloning. Scaling EBS often involves provisioning new volumes and copying data.
Architecture comparison
Simplyblock uses a NVMe-first architecture where data is written to a high-performance NVMe storage cluster and then transparently tiered to cheaper storage like EBS or S3 based on access patterns. It provides a unified virtual storage pool across different storage types. The storage is accessed via NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics), allowing low-latency access.
In contrast, Amazon EBS provides network-attached block storage that is accessed over the network from EC2 or Kubernetes instances. Each EBS volume is an independent resource that needs to be provisioned, attached, and managed separately. EBS does not natively support storage tiering or pooling multiple volumes into a single storage system.
Benefits of Simplyblock?
Simplyblock improves your cloud storage performance and simplifies volume management.
Simplified Volume Management
Simplyblock abstracts storage complexities, enabling self-service provisioning and management through a unified interface. This eliminates the need to manage individual EBS volumes, reducing operational overhead.
Up to 75% Cost Reduction
Simplyblock's thin provisioning, storage pooling, and intelligent tiering to lower-cost storage like S3 significantly reduce storage costs compared to EBS. These optimizations can result in up to 75% cost savings.
Intelligent Data Services
Simplyblock offers advanced data services like instant snapshots, clones, and transparent storage tiering, enabling powerful data management capabilities. In contrast, EBS lacks these intelligent data services, limiting its flexibility and efficiency for modern workloads.
More Reasons to Move to Simplyblock
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial support |
 |
| Simplyblock provides commercial support, offering customers a direct line of communication with our expert team. This ensures quick resolution of any issues and ongoing guidance. |
| Simplified volume management |
|
| Simplyblock offers a simplified volume management experience, allowing users to easily create, resize, and manage storage volumes without the complexity of traditional storage provisioning. This streamlines storage operations and reduces the administrative overhead. |
| Enhanced compliance verification |
|
| Simplyblock is designed to meet stringent compliance requirements, and data is always stored in the customer's account. This is particularly useful for organizations operating in highly regulated industries. The additional insight and control makes it a better alternative to Amazon EBS. |
| Designed for cloud-native |
|
| Simplyblock is purpose-built for modern, cloud-native applications, providing seamless integration with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and microservices architectures. This allows for better alignment with cloud-native development practices. |
| Unified storage interface |
|
| Simplyblock offers a unified storage interface, providing a consistent experience across different storage tiers and use cases. This eliminates the need to manage multiple storage solutions, simplifying operations and reducing the learning curve. |
| Commercial support | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock provides commercial support, offering customers a direct line of communication with our expert team. This ensures quick resolution of any issues and ongoing guidance. | |
| Simplified volume management | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock offers a simplified volume management experience, allowing users to easily create, resize, and manage storage volumes without the complexity of traditional storage provisioning. This streamlines storage operations and reduces the administrative overhead. | |
| Enhanced compliance verification | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock is designed to meet stringent compliance requirements, and data is always stored in the customer's account. This is particularly useful for organizations operating in highly regulated industries. The additional insight and control makes it a better alternative to Amazon EBS. | |
| Designed for cloud-native | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock is purpose-built for modern, cloud-native applications, providing seamless integration with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and microservices architectures. This allows for better alignment with cloud-native development practices. | |
| Unified storage interface | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock offers a unified storage interface, providing a consistent experience across different storage tiers and use cases. This eliminates the need to manage multiple storage solutions, simplifying operations and reducing the learning curve. | |
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High IOPS density |
|
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS are capable of delivering high IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) density, enabling workloads with demanding I/O requirements to achieve optimal performance. Amazon EBS, however, requires expensive io2 volumes for IOPS requirements. Bundle, distribute and save with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| IOPS pooling |
|
| Simplyblock's IOPS pooling feature for Amazon EBS allows customers to efficiently utilize and share IOPS capacity across multiple volumes, ensuring optimal resource utilization and performance for their applications. |
| Low latency |
|
| Both storage solutions are designed to provide low-latency access to data, ensuring responsiveness for critical applications. For Amazon EBS, however, expensive io2 block express volumes are required to achieve the lowest latency possible. |
| Resource efficiency |
|
| Simplyblock's architecture is optimized for resource efficiency, allowing customers to maximize the performance-to-cost ratio of their storage investments. |
| Tiered storage |
|
| Simplyblock supports automatic tiered storage, enabling users to optimize their storage costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on their access patterns and requirements. |
| High IOPS density | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS are capable of delivering high IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) density, enabling workloads with demanding I/O requirements to achieve optimal performance. Amazon EBS, however, requires expensive io2 volumes for IOPS requirements. Bundle, distribute and save with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. | |
| IOPS pooling | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock's IOPS pooling feature for Amazon EBS allows customers to efficiently utilize and share IOPS capacity across multiple volumes, ensuring optimal resource utilization and performance for their applications. | |
| Low latency | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Both storage solutions are designed to provide low-latency access to data, ensuring responsiveness for critical applications. For Amazon EBS, however, expensive io2 block express volumes are required to achieve the lowest latency possible. | |
| Resource efficiency | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock's architecture is optimized for resource efficiency, allowing customers to maximize the performance-to-cost ratio of their storage investments. | |
| Tiered storage | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock supports automatic tiered storage, enabling users to optimize their storage costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on their access patterns and requirements. | |
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thin provisioning |
|
| Simplyblock supports thin provisioning, which allows users to allocate storage capacity on-demand, reducing waste and improving overall storage utilization. |
| Storage tiering |
|
| Simplyblock offers storage tiering capabilities, allowing customers to optimize their costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on access patterns and requirements. |
| Volume consolidation |
|
| Simplyblock provides volume consolidation, enabling users to combine multiple smaller volumes into a single, larger volume. This helps optimize storage capacity and reduce administrative overhead. |
| Deduplication |
|
| Simplyblock's deduplication feature reduces storage consumption by identifying and eliminating redundant data, leading to significant cost savings for customers. |
| Inline Compression |
|
| Simplyblock's inline compression capability further reduces storage costs by compacting data without impacting performance, providing additional efficiency benefits. |
| Thin provisioning | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock supports thin provisioning, which allows users to allocate storage capacity on-demand, reducing waste and improving overall storage utilization. | |
| Storage tiering | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock offers storage tiering capabilities, allowing customers to optimize their costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on access patterns and requirements. | |
| Volume consolidation | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock provides volume consolidation, enabling users to combine multiple smaller volumes into a single, larger volume. This helps optimize storage capacity and reduce administrative overhead. | |
| Deduplication | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock's deduplication feature reduces storage consumption by identifying and eliminating redundant data, leading to significant cost savings for customers. | |
| Inline Compression | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock's inline compression capability further reduces storage costs by compacting data without impacting performance, providing additional efficiency benefits. | |
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durability |
|
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS offer high levels of data durability, ensuring the long-term preservation of customer data. However, simplyblock provides the same durability of io2 volumes for a price lower than gp3. |
| Fault tolerance |
|
| Both storage solutions are designed to be fault-tolerant, providing redundancy and automatic recovery mechanisms to protect against hardware failures. Simplyblock volumes, however, can be reattached without any delay. Eliminate downtimes with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| Efficient data protection |
|
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces the storage overhead over Amazon EBS volume mirroring (e.g. software RAID-1). Safe two or three times on storage cost with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| Low RPO disaster recovery |
|
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. |
| Point-in-time recovery |
|
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. |
| Cross-AZ recovery |
|
| Simplyblock S3-backed write-ahead log enables low RPO cross-availability zone and even cross-region disaster recovery of a single service or a whole infrastructure. |
| Durability | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS offer high levels of data durability, ensuring the long-term preservation of customer data. However, simplyblock provides the same durability of io2 volumes for a price lower than gp3. | |
| Fault tolerance | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Both storage solutions are designed to be fault-tolerant, providing redundancy and automatic recovery mechanisms to protect against hardware failures. Simplyblock volumes, however, can be reattached without any delay. Eliminate downtimes with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. | |
| Efficient data protection | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces the storage overhead over Amazon EBS volume mirroring (e.g. software RAID-1). Safe two or three times on storage cost with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. | |
| Low RPO disaster recovery | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. | |
| Point-in-time recovery | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. | |
| Cross-AZ recovery | |
|
Simplyblock
|
Amazon EBS |
| Simplyblock S3-backed write-ahead log enables low RPO cross-availability zone and even cross-region disaster recovery of a single service or a whole infrastructure. | |
Operation and Administration
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial support |
|
| Simplyblock provides commercial support, offering customers a direct line of communication with our expert team. This ensures quick resolution of any issues and ongoing guidance. |
| Simplified volume management |
|
| Simplyblock offers a simplified volume management experience, allowing users to easily create, resize, and manage storage volumes without the complexity of traditional storage provisioning. This streamlines storage operations and reduces the administrative overhead. |
| Enhanced compliance verification |
|
| Simplyblock is designed to meet stringent compliance requirements, and data is always stored in the customer's account. This is particularly useful for organizations operating in highly regulated industries. The additional insight and control makes it a better alternative to Amazon EBS. |
| Designed for cloud-native |
|
| Simplyblock is purpose-built for modern, cloud-native applications, providing seamless integration with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and microservices architectures. This allows for better alignment with cloud-native development practices. |
| Unified storage interface |
|
| Simplyblock offers a unified storage interface, providing a consistent experience across different storage tiers and use cases. This eliminates the need to manage multiple storage solutions, simplifying operations and reducing the learning curve. |
Performance
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High IOPS density |
|
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS are capable of delivering high IOPS (Input/Output Operations per Second) density, enabling workloads with demanding I/O requirements to achieve optimal performance. Amazon EBS, however, requires expensive io2 volumes for IOPS requirements. Bundle, distribute and save with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| IOPS pooling |
|
| Simplyblock's IOPS pooling feature for Amazon EBS allows customers to efficiently utilize and share IOPS capacity across multiple volumes, ensuring optimal resource utilization and performance for their applications. |
| Low latency |
|
| Both storage solutions are designed to provide low-latency access to data, ensuring responsiveness for critical applications. For Amazon EBS, however, expensive io2 block express volumes are required to achieve the lowest latency possible. |
| Resource efficiency |
|
| Simplyblock's architecture is optimized for resource efficiency, allowing customers to maximize the performance-to-cost ratio of their storage investments. |
| Tiered storage |
|
| Simplyblock supports automatic tiered storage, enabling users to optimize their storage costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on their access patterns and requirements. |
Costs
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thin provisioning |
|
| Simplyblock supports thin provisioning, which allows users to allocate storage capacity on-demand, reducing waste and improving overall storage utilization. |
| Storage tiering |
|
| Simplyblock offers storage tiering capabilities, allowing customers to optimize their costs by placing data on the appropriate performance tier based on access patterns and requirements. |
| Volume consolidation |
|
| Simplyblock provides volume consolidation, enabling users to combine multiple smaller volumes into a single, larger volume. This helps optimize storage capacity and reduce administrative overhead. |
| Deduplication |
|
| Simplyblock's deduplication feature reduces storage consumption by identifying and eliminating redundant data, leading to significant cost savings for customers. |
| Inline Compression |
|
| Simplyblock's inline compression capability further reduces storage costs by compacting data without impacting performance, providing additional efficiency benefits. |
Reliability
| Simplyblock | Amazon EBS | Details | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Durability |
|
| Both Simplyblock and Amazon EBS offer high levels of data durability, ensuring the long-term preservation of customer data. However, simplyblock provides the same durability of io2 volumes for a price lower than gp3. |
| Fault tolerance |
|
| Both storage solutions are designed to be fault-tolerant, providing redundancy and automatic recovery mechanisms to protect against hardware failures. Simplyblock volumes, however, can be reattached without any delay. Eliminate downtimes with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| Efficient data protection |
|
| Simplyblock’s performance-optimized and distributed erasure coding algorithm significantly reduces the storage overhead over Amazon EBS volume mirroring (e.g. software RAID-1). Safe two or three times on storage cost with simplyblock as your Amazon EBS alternative. |
| Low RPO disaster recovery |
|
| Using a streaming write-ahead log, simplyblock enables near-zero RPO disaster recovery with a low RTO. Disaster recovery can be inside the same availability zone, data center, or across zones. |
| Point-in-time recovery |
|
| Using its block-level write-ahead log, simplyblock provides a full point-in-time recovery option that lets you rewind your storage to an earlier point in time, for example, before ransomware has encrypted the drive or before a human-error delete operation. |
| Cross-AZ recovery |
|
| Simplyblock S3-backed write-ahead log enables low RPO cross-availability zone and even cross-region disaster recovery of a single service or a whole infrastructure. |