Blog > Amazon Elastic file storage ( EFS)
Why Need Amazon Elastic file storage?
As lots of enterprise software applications require shared file storage which is accessible by multiple computers simultaneously. Here is the problem with building a personal file storage system; it takes time and can be costly. After file storage system deployment, it also requires complex maintenance and backup operations to ensure its performance is well and data is secure. To resolve all this complex maintenance, AWS provides Amazon Elastic File Storage System (EFS).
Amazon Elastic File storage is scalable file storage that can be useful with Amazon EC2. It allows an enterprise application running on multiple EC2 instances to access the file system simultaneously. The service uses the industry-standard NFS version for file access protocol.
Amazon EFS Attributes
- Standard file system interface and semantics
- Shared storage
- Highly available
- Highly durable
- Consistent, low latencies
- Scalable (storage & throughput)
- Elastic capacity
- Fully managed
Core Features of EFS
- Simple
- Elastic
- Scalable
- Highly Durable
- Highly Available
How is EFS Simple?
Fully Managed
- No hardware, network, file layer
- Create a scalable file system
Seamless integration with existing tools and apps
- NFS v4.1 –widespread, open
- Standard file system access semantic
- Works with standard operating system file system APIs
- Simple pricing = simple forecasting
Elasticity
- File systems grow and sink automatically as the user add or remove files
- No need for provision storage capacity or performance
- The user will pay what storage space they use with no minimum fee
Scalability
- File systems can grow to petabytes of capacity
- High throughput scalable and automatically grow file systems
- Consistent low latencies regardless of file system size
- EFS provides support for thousands of concurrent NFS connections
High Durability & High Availability
- Every file system object can store redundantly across multiple availability zones in a region
- Designed to sustain availability zone offline conditions
- Superior to traditional NAS availability models
- EFS is appropriate for production/tier applications
Who needs an EFS File System?
Enterprise who has an application or use case requires a file system with multi-attach systems, more throughput, availability/durability, and requires automatic scaling (grow/shrink) of storage need Amazon Elastic File Storage.
What are Customers using EFS for Today?
- Web serving
- Content management
- Database backups
- Analytics
- Container Storage
- Media and Entertainment Workflows
- Workflow Management
- Home Directories
Access EFS File System via AWS Direct Connect
Amazon EFS file system also allows accessing files from within a VPC in AWS and on-premises servers via an AWS direct connect connection. AWS direct connect provides a private network connection between on-premises environments; AWS bypasses the internet entirely and improves latencies and throughput.
Direct Connect Support Addresses Three of Four Hybrid Scenarios
- Migration
- Bursting
- Tiering
- Backup / DR (Disaster Recovery)
Understand Key Technical and Security Concepts
What is a File System?
- The primary resource in EFS
- Where the users store files and directories
- Can create 125 file system per account
Several Security Mechanisms
- It also control Network Traffic to and from file systems by using VPC security groups and network ACLs
- By using POSIX permissions, it Control file, and directory access
- Control administrative access (API access) to file systems by using AWS identity and access management (IAM)
EFS supports action-level and resource-level permissions
Transferring Media Assets to EFS
- Amazon EFS provides size ranges from a few GB to 100+GB per file.
- Data sources: Amazon S3, Amazon EBS
Transferring many small files to EFS
- Size ranges from 64K to 256K
- Data sources: Amazon S3, Amazon EBS
Tools to use for Monitoring
DATADOG: Instance performance
Sumologic: Log Collection, Visualization
SALTSTACK: Command orchestration, Instance Configuration.
Amazon EFS has a Distributed Data Storage Design
Distributed file systems across unconstrained numbers of servers
- Avoids bottlenecks/constraints of traditional file servers
Enables high levels of aggregate IOPS/throughput
- Data also distributed across availability zones (durability, availability)
Author: SVCIT Editorial
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