Want fast data processing? Use attached SSD on your cloud compute nodes. It's a great deal.
Consider the AWS m6gd.8xlarge instance type. It has an attached 1900 GB NVMe SSD. One source benchmarks it at 444_552 Read IOPS, 186_467 Write IOPS. It costs $1055.87/Month.
Right next door is the m6d.8xlarge instance without SSD for $899.36/Month.
Using the AWS price calculator, replacing that storage with EBS and provisioned IOPS we have:
gp3 16_000 IOPS 1900 GB: $217.00/Month
io2 64_000 IOPS 1900 GB: $3,773.50/Month
Neither of those plans is cheaper than the faster attached SSD.
This is in terms of AWS, but I'm pretty sure it applies to GCP and other providers too.
The benefit of EBS is that it's more durable, survives instance shutdowns and crashes. But, I've worked at several jobs where a large-ish chunk of data needs fast processing, but will be extensively backed up or otherwise redundantly stored elsewhere. Losing a server would be a temporary inconvenience easily recovered.
