Earlier quoted context omitted.
something that behaves like a local file system (without the gotchas of NFS like a lack of delete on close), but I don't have to snapshot and create new volumes and issue file system expansion commands to grow a volume. I want seamless and automatic growth. Wouldn't EBS w/ thin provisioning get you most of this? Just create a massive volume, and you get billed for the space actually used. (and the volume size could a…
Yes, good point. This would provide effectively "infinite" backing storage. There might be some hurdles to overcome, though. For example, when you delete a file, will EBS know that the blocks are now free and thus can be decommissioned? This might mean the whole stack needs to support things like TRIM. I'm not sure the rest of the stack is smart enough yet. I'd love to hear from a storage/FS expert on this. Edit: coi…
And yes, trim is used to mark blocks as free.
Honestly, it's so widespread, I would be surprised if Amazon weren't already using it to over-commit ebs.