AMAZON ELASTIC FILE SYSTEM (EFS)

AWS provides three primary storage solutions- Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Storage, and Amazon Elastic File System. It can be confusing to some as to which storage solution would most benefit their organisation, and which service they could leverage the most.

In this blog, we have a look at Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), a serverless cloud storage solution, while also covering some of its features, use cases, and case studies.

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So, what is Amazon EFS?

Simply put, it is a scalable, cloud-based file system supporting Linux-based applications and workloads that can work in tandem with AWS cloud services and on-premise resources.??

Depending on an organisations' needs, EFS offers 2 storage classes: Standard Access and Infrequent Access. Standard access storage is meant for regularly accessed data, whereas Infrequent Access storage is intended for long-term but one that is intended to be accessed less often, and hence cheaper.

The service enables the file servers to scale automatically from gigabytes to petabytes of data without any mentioned storage preference.??It provides flexible storage capacity that scales to accommodate workloads that run on AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and access files through application programming interface (API) requests.

An AWS EFS file system can be thousands of compute instances at the same time if required, and??more importantly- Amazon EFS ensures consistent performance for each compute instance. The service also supports periodic backups from on-premises storage services to EFS for disaster recovery.

How accessible is Amazon EFS?

IT operations staff can mount an existing file system on an EC2 Linux instance to access it within Amazon EFS or create and manage a new file system from the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface, Amazon EFS API or AWS software development kits (SDKs). The Management Console, API and SDK also enable administrators to delete systems and configure access and tags.

The service includes file system access facilities, such as data consistency and file locks. An administrator controls access to the service through AWS Identity and Access Management roles and limits network access through Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) security groups.

Amazon EFS also provides multiple back-up options which include: AWS DataSync, AWS Glacier, Amazon S3, AWS Backup, AWS Transfer Family, and an internal EFS to EFS backup option.

Features of Amazon EFS

1. Storage options: Amazon EFS offers two storage classes for files, and the pricing for both change according to preference.

2. Secure and compliant: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud is a secure, managed cloud environment that runs applications inside AWS and controls virtual network access to file systems. It allows developers to make fully isolated VPCs in an AWS ecosystem. This gives control over AWS networking.

3. Scalable performance: The service is designed to make file storage and access scalable, while minimizing time spent on administration.

Additionally, application access can be controlled with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which is a set of services for managing AWS users, groups, roles and policies. It gives a centralised overview of the current services and users linked to the AWS account.

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Use cases??

1. DevOps: To boost DevOps agility and respond faster to client input, share code, and other assets in a secure, structured manner.

2. Data Science: It provides high performance consistency which is required for ML based models and big data analytics as well.

3. Content Management System: It can enhance CMS by simplifying persistent storage for CMS workloads- enabling organisations to bring their newly developed products to markets quicker while being cost-efficient.

4. Application Development and Modernisation: With no management required, organisations can persist and exchange data from their current AWS containers and serverless applications.

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Case Studies

1. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC Red Button): The BBC Red Button application is an interactive TV service through which viewers can access additional television programming, live coverage for different genres ranging from sport to news. .By using Amazon EFS to share files, the BBC built an agile and cost-effective solution, migrating its on-premises Red Button interactive TV service to the AWS Cloud.

2. Creative Market:?Creative Market offers independent creatives a platform where they can open shops to sell their digital creations, serving more than three million members.They use Amazon EFS To store the more than one million image files that shop owners use to market the products they offer for sale, which has saved them about 95% annually when compared to their previous File Storage Solution.

3. LoanLogic: They are a software company that helps its customers validate compliance and manage risk during the manufacture and acquisition of loan assets. LoanLogics scales to storage demands in days instead of weeks using AWS Storage Gateway and Amazon Elastic File System. This gives more time to their product and development teams to focus on delivering value to customers.

How can Ataloud help?

Connect with an Ataloud consultant today ([email protected]) for a seamless experience for your business' transition to the cloud. We can analyze, discuss and help validate your AWS billing and usage patterns, perform routine audits, perform log analysis, analyze and monitor performances- on top of the other managed services that we offer.