What does Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) provide?

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides block-level storage volumes specifically designed for use with Amazon EC2 instances. This type of storage is essential for applications requiring a file system or database that necessitates frequent read and write access to data. EBS volumes can be attached to EC2 instances, allowing them to perform tasks such as storing persistent data, running databases, and supporting applications requiring fast access to storage.

Unlike the provided alternatives, EBS is not a shared file system, nor is it designed for object storage or data transformation. Shared file system storage is typically handled by Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), which allows multiple instances to connect to a common storage point. Serverless object storage for data archiving is facilitated by Amazon S3, which is optimized for storing and retrieving any amount of data from anywhere on the web. Lastly, data transformation services for ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) jobs are generally associated with services like AWS Glue, which focuses on preparing data for analytics rather than providing direct storage capabilities. This distinction reinforces the unique role that Amazon EBS plays in the AWS ecosystem.