How do you choose between AWS S3 and EFS for your back-end web development project?

I agree, but S3 can host a static web page or a React application. You can get the public-facing URL to access the HTML files exported from a javascript build. You can get more advanced options like CDN with S3 for high availability and S3 events can be triggered on adding & updating objects.

Currently, S3 is very powerful for storage files such as images, videos and so on.. S3 have multiple tier that help you can save cost for your company. You can set up S3 to move some files that rarely was accessed by users to others tier for save money. Let's suppose that you have a movie website, but some movies of ten years ago don't have any people want to access. If you place your movie file data in Standard Tier, it'll waste too much money, S3 can help you save that money. It's really helpful and convenient.

The choice between AWS S3 and EFS depends on the project's requirements. Use AWS S3 for scalable, cost-effective object storage, ideal for static assets and backups. EFS is suitable for dynamic, shared file storage, ensuring file consistency and supporting databases and content management systems. Consider S3 when prioritizing scalability and cost efficiency, while EFS is preferable for applications requiring shared file access and data consistency. Assess project needs to determine the most suitable AWS service.

Use S3 if: You need to store static files like images, videos, or user-uploaded content. Cost is a major concern and you have infrequently accessed data. Your application doesn't require complex file system operations. Use EFS if: Your application needs frequent file access with low latency. Your application relies on traditional file system functionalities. Cost is less of a concern compared to performance.

In projects that store files on the cloud, besides using Azure or Google Cloud, we often see S3 being used quite extensively for storing files and media. The S3 storage classes are designed to provide the lowest cost storage for various access patterns. S3 is quite convenient due to its excellent scalability, pay-as-you-go pricing, and robust support.

Actually, the service of AWS will be seperated by Zone and Region, you can understand EFS like the area that you can store all files and the service of difference Zone, all EC2 servers in difference Zone can access to that files. You can use EFS with Reserved EC2, it's really helpful and cost-saving.

EFS is a cloud-based file storage service that allows you to create & configure file systems that can be accessed by multiple AWS EC2 instances simultaneously. It is designed to provide scalable, elastic storage that automatically grows & shrinks as you add & remove files, without the need for manual provisioning or capacity management. Scalability: Automatically scales up and down based on your storage needs. Elasticity: No need to provision or manage capacity; EFS handles it automatically. Shared Access: Multiple EC2 instances can mount the same file system, making it ideal for distributed applications. It's particularly useful for applications that need to maintain a common file repository accessible by many servers.

There's a nice AWS blog post from a large biotech company explaining how they use S3 for initial data ingestion, then use EFS as a "transient file system" to run large scale distributed processing jobs, before storing the results back into S3. In my startup, for our flagship web app (enabling large scale analysis of brain data), we adopted a similar approach: we first store the initial data in S3. Then, for low to mid-scale processing jobs, we transfer it to EBS, but for large-scale distributed ML jobs, we transfer it to EFS. The latter is, in fact, not far from what Amazon's EMR itself does.

When choosing between AWS S3 and EFS for a back-end web development project, consider your needs for file storage and access. S3 offers scalable object storage with high durability, making it ideal for static files, backups, and large data sets. In contrast, EFS provides a scalable, POSIX-compliant file system for EC2 instances, supporting dynamic files that require frequent updates or complex operations. In my experience, integrating EFS for real-time log processing significantly improved performance due to its low latency and high throughput. For static content, S3 remains a go-to due to its cost-effectiveness and durability.

EFS is shared network file storage system, that can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances. It has high-performing scaling and automatic based on demand. It stores files and folders while maintaining its hierarchy.

These two are really very different. Amazon S3 is a static storage solution best used for storage purposes, while Amazon EFS is optimal when you need an auto-scaling storage solution to run applications that require handling significant increases in workloads...

When choosing between AWS S3 and EFS for back-end web development, consider performance, scalability, compatibility, security, and cost. S3 excels with lower latency and higher throughput for external access, while EFS performs better within the same availability zone. S3 offers more storage classes and robust security options, such as bucket policies and versioning, whereas EFS provides NFS protocol support and simpler file ACLs. In my experience, using S3 for large static data has been cost-effective and scalable, while EFS has been useful for dynamic data needing frequent access. Leveraging S3’s storage classes effectively can significantly optimize costs.

S3 and EFS are both storage services provided by AWS but are designed for different purposes. S3 is used for storing objects, which is great for handling large amounts of unstructured data such as backups and media files. EFS, on the other hand, is a file storage service that is designed for shared access across multiple instances, similar to a file system. S3 is more cost-effective but does not support direct file sharing between systems, whereas EFS allows multiple systems to read and write files simultaneously. EFS is ideal for file-sharing scenarios, while S3 is better suited for storing large datasets.

Additional Considerations: Data Access Patterns: S3: Ideal for infrequent access to large datasets. ? EFS: Optimized for frequent access to data by multiple instances. ? Data Consistency: S3: Eventual consistency, meaning data might not be immediately available to all clients. ? EFS: Strongly consistent, ensuring data is accessible to all clients immediately. ? Performance Optimization: S3: Leverage transfer acceleration, content delivery networks (CDNs), and object lifecycle management for performance improvements. ? EFS: Optimize performance by choosing the right throughput mode and considering factors like network latency and file size.

S3 is more popular with many developers. However, the S3 file URLs are long and not friendly. To improve this, We can use CloudFront, which is also one service of Amazon.

Web Applications: Static content: S3 is ideal for serving images, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. User-generated content: Consider using S3 for uploads and EFS for temporary storage during processing. Session data: EFS can be used for storing session information shared across multiple instances. Big Data Analytics: Data storage: Use S3 for storing large datasets due to its low cost. Processing: Use EFS for temporary storage of processed data during analysis.

S3 and EFS serve different purposes. S3 is an object storage (sometimes referred to as blob storage) where the storage is static and can be connected to from external sources. S3 is highly appropriate for files that are not accessed all the time. If you use EFS it is likely to need a specific file system and host files such as application files that need to be almost constantly accessed, especially if this data is dynamic.

S3 and EFS might sound similar yet they are designed for different purposes. Consider using S3 to persist a large number of static data where access time (data fetching) is unimportant. For example, persisting archives, reports, static images, etc. Consider using EFS when you constantly work with data - active reading and updating. For example, streaming videos, dynamic media, etc.

Before starting the process migration, you should research and understand the difference of S3 and EFS, and you need to make the questions with problem, solution and result. Problems of storing files in S3, migrating from S3 to EFS can solve what problems, why migrating can help you solve problems and the benefit, the result of migrating to others service, such as cost-saving or something like that.

- Data access patterns: How often will data be accessed and modified? - Data size and growth: How much data will you store and how quickly will it grow? - Performance requirements: What are the latency and throughput needs of your application? - Consistency requirements: Do you need strong or eventual consistency? - Cost: What is your budget for storage and data transfer?

As a less experienced developer, I often use S3 to store media files for my projects. I will briefly discuss how to minimize costs. In S3, there is no minimum fee applied. Amazon S3 charges you for the following types of usage: Storage capacity used. Data transfer in. Data transfer out. Data requests. Data retrieval. Factors that affect the cost of S3: Storage class. Data size. Data retrieval size. Number of retrieval requests. AWS region. You should determine the Storage Classes you will use to save on costs...

As a Backend Developer , in my daily basis I have used S3 to storAs a Backend Developer, I regularly use S3 to store and manage images. It's part of my everyday tasks to handle image storage efficiently. S3 provides a reliable solution for storing large amounts of image data.e the images