Amazon EFS

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides simple, scalable, elastic file storage for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources.

It is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily.

Amazon EFS is built to elastically scale on demand without disrupting applications, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files, so your applications have the storage they need, when they need it.

It is designed to provide massively parallel shared access to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances, enabling your applications to achieve high levels of aggregate throughput and IOPS that scale as a file system grows, with consistent low latencies.

As a regional service, Amazon EFS is designed for high availability and durability storing data redundantly across multiple Availability Zones.

With these capabilities, Amazon EFS is well suited to support a broad spectrum of use cases, including web serving and content management, enterprise applications, media and entertainment processing workflows, home directories, database backups, developer tools, container storage, and big data analytics workloads.

Benefits

SIMPLE

Amazon EFS has a simple web services interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily. The service manages all the file storage infrastructure for you, avoiding the complexity of deploying, patching, and maintaining complex file system deployments.

SHARED FILE STORAGE

Multiple Amazon EC2 instances and on-premises servers can simultaneously access an Amazon EFS file system, so applications that scale beyond a single instance can access a file system. Amazon EC2 instances running in multiple Availability Zones (AZs) within the same region can access the file system, so that many users can access and share a common data source.

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION

Amazon EFS provides a file system interface and file system access semantics (such as strong data consistency and file locking). Amazon EC2 instances mount Amazon EFS file systems via the NFSv4 protocol, using standard operating system mount commands. You can also mount Amazon EFS file systems on your on-premises datacenter servers via the NFSv4 protocol when connected to your Amazon VPC with AWS Direct Connect.

AUTOMATICALLY SCALES

Amazon EFS automatically and instantly scales your file system storage capacity up or down as you add or remove files without disrupting your applications, giving you just the storage you need while also reducing time-consuming administration tasks.

SCALEABLE PERFORMANCE

Amazon EFS is designed to provide the throughput, IOPS, and low latency needed for a broad range of workloads. With Amazon EFS, throughput and IOPS scale as a file system grows, and file operations are delivered with consistent, low latencies.

LOW COST

Amazon EFS provides the capacity you need, when you need it, without having to provision storage in advance. You pay for what you use, with no minimum commitments or up-front fees. To see an example of the TCO benefits of Amazon EFS, see here.

HIGHLY AVAILABLE AND DURABLE

Amazon EFS is designed to be highly available and durable. Each Amazon EFS file system object (i.e. directory, file, and link) is redundantly stored across multiple Availability Zones.

OPTIMIZED TRANSFERS

Amazon EFS provides a simple and secure way to move data from existing on-premises or in-cloud file systems, with the ability to copy files and directories at speeds up to 5x faster than standard Linux copy tools.

SECURE

Amazon EFS allows you to tightly control access to your file systems through POSIX permissions. Use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to manage network access. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), to control access to Amazon EFS APIs. Encrypt your data at rest and in transit for a comprehensive solution securing both stored data and data in flight.