> It is possible to mount an EBS volume and have RethinkDB store your data on it, but that setup is not available out of the box.

That's a curious default choice. It's hard for me to imagine why you'd ever want to run RethinkDB on local instance storange, instead of EBS, given that EBS is much more reliable, is easier to back up, can be swapped between instances, etc. (Or is this AMI more for just trying out, not for actual production use?)

Obviously, EBS has its problems, but so does local instance storage.

Also: I remember that way-back-when, RethinkDB was touted as being designed for SSD's from the ground up. Is that still the case? Would running on provisioned-IOPS EBS provide a huge benefit over regular EBS or regular local storage?