Amazon Elastic File System
Tags: amazon, efs, fsx
Published: 2022-10-12 05:35:28

• Amazon EFS is a serverless, scalable, high-performance file system in the cloud. 

• EFS file systems can be accessed by Amazon EC2 Linux instances, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, AWS Fargate, and AWS Lambda functions via a file system interface such as NFS protocol. 

• Amazon EFS supports file system access semantics such as strong consistency and file locking. 

• EFS file systems can automatically scale in storage to handle petabytes of data. With Bursting mode, the throughput available to a file system scales as a file system grows. Provisioned Throughput mode allows you to provision a constant file system throughput independent of the amount of data stored. 

• EFS file systems can be concurrently accessed by thousands of compute services without sacrificing performance. 

• Common use cases for EFS file systems include big data and analytics workloads, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories. 

• Amazon EFS has four storage classes: Standard, Standard Infrequent Access, One Zone, and One Zone Infrequent Access 

• You can create lifecycle management rules to move your data from standard storage classes to infrequent access storage classes. 

• Every EFS file system object of Standard storage is redundantly stored across multiple AZs. 

• EFS offers the ability to encrypt data at rest and in transit. Data encrypted at rest using AWS KMS for encryption keys. Data encryption in transit uses TLS 1.2 

• To access EFS file systems from on-premises, you must have an AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connection between your on-
premises datacenter and your Amazon VPC.

**Amazon FSx for Windows File Server** 
• Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed, scalable file storage that is accessible over SMB protocol.  

• Since it is built on Windows Server, it natively supports administrative features such as user quotas, end-user file restore, and Microsoft Active Directory integration. 

• FSx for WFS is accessible from Windows, Linux, and MacOS compute instances and devices. Thousands of compute instances and devices can access a file system concurrently. 

• FSx  for WFS can connect your file system to Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, VMware Cloud on AWS, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Amazon AppStream 2.0 instances. 

• Every file system comes with a default Windows file share, named “share”. 

• Common use cases for FSx for WFS include CRM, ERP, custom or .NET applications, home directories, data analytics, media and entertainment workflows, software build environments, and Microsoft SQL Server. 

• You can access FSx file systems from your on-premises environment using an AWS Direct Connect or AWS VPN connection between your on-premises datacenter and your Amazon VPC.  

• You can choose the storage type for your file system: SSD storage for latency-sensitive workloads or workloads requiring the highest levels of IOPS/throughput. HDD storage for throughput-focused workloads that aren’t latency-sensitive. 

• Every FSx for WFS ﬁle system has a throughput capacity that you conﬁgure when the ﬁle system is created and that you can change at any time. 

• Each Windows File Server file system can store up to 64 TB of data. You can only manually increase the storage capacity. 

• Your file system can be deployed in multiple AZs or a single AZ only. Multi-AZ file systems provide automatic failover. 

• FSx for Windows File Server always encrypts your file system data and your backups at-rest using keys you manage through AWS KMS. Data-in-transit encryption uses SMB Kerberos session keys. 

**Amazon FSx for Lustre** 

• Amazon FSx for Lustre is a serverless file system that runs on Lustre ー an open-source, high-performance file system. 

• The Lustre file system is designed for applications that require fast storage. FSx for Lustre file systems can scale to hundreds of GB/s of throughput and millions of IOPS. FSx for Lustre also supports concurrent access to the same file or directory from thousands of compute instances. 

• Unlike EFS, storage capacity needs to be manually increased, and only every six hours can you do so. 

• Amazon FSx for Lustre also integrates with Amazon S3, which lets you process cloud data sets with the Lustre high-performance file system. 

• Common use cases for Lustre include machine learning, high-performance computing (HPC), video processing, financial modeling, genome sequencing, and electronic design automation (EDA). 

• FSx for Lustre can only be used by Linux-based instances. To access your file system, you first install the open-source Lustre client on that instance. Then you mount your file system using standard Linux commands. Lustre file systems can also be used with Amazon EKS and AWS Batch. 

**FSx for Lustre provides two deployment options:**
 

Scratch file systems are for temporary storage and shorter-term processing of data. Data is not replicated and does not persist if a file server fails. 

Persistent file systems are for longer-term storage and workloads. The file servers are highly available, and data is automatically replicated within the AZ that is associated with the file system. 

• You can choose the storage type for your file system: SSD storage for latency-sensitive workloads or workloads requiring the highest levels of IOPS/throughput. HDD storage for throughput-focused workloads that aren’t latency-sensitive. 

• FSx for Lustre always encrypts your file system data and your backups at-rest using keys you manage through AWS KMS. FSx encrypts data-in-transit when accessed from supported EC2 instances