AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate (legacy) — Question 811

A user has launched an EC2 instance from an instance store backed AMI. If the user restarts the instance, what will happen to the ephemeral storage data?

Answer options

• A. All the data will be erased but the ephemeral storage will stay connected
• B. All data will be erased and the ephemeral storage is released
• C. It is not possible to restart an instance launched from an instance store backed AMI
• D. The data is preserved

Correct answer: D

Explanation

Rebooting an EC2 instance does not affect the data stored on its instance store (ephemeral storage), meaning the data is fully preserved during a standard restart. Ephemeral data is only lost when the instance is stopped, terminated, or suffers a hardware failure. Because instance store-backed instances cannot be stopped (only rebooted or terminated), a reboot safely maintains the instance store data.