Amazon’s Elastic File System (EFS) is a scalable storage solution that can be used for general purpose workloads. An EFS can be attached to multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute instances and on-premises servers, providing a common resource for applications and data storage in many different environments.
Let’s look at how an EFS functions and the benefits it provides organizational computing environments, including:
- What is an EFS?
- Advantages to using an EFS
- Disadvantages to using an EFS
- Use cases for EFS volumes
- Creating an EFS
- Mounting an EFS on an on-premises server
- EFS pricing
- Creating & using an EFS
(This article is part of our AWS Guide. Use the right-hand menu to navigate.)
What is an EFS?
An EFS is a Network File System (NFS) that organizes data in a logical file hierarchy. Data is stored in a path-based system, where data files are organized in folders and sub-folders.
Mapped file server drives and detachable USB drives both use hierarchical file systems, so the concept should be familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with personal computers and servers.
EFSs are ideal candidates for storing:
- Organizational data
- File server
- Individual data
- Application data
Amazon states that a single EFS can be simultaneously connected to thousands of Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances or on-premise resources, allowing you to share EFS data with as many resources as needed.
Access to shared EFS folders and data is provided through native operating system interfaces.
Advantages to using an EFS
An Amazon EFS is elastic. That means its storage capacity can be automatically scaled up (add more storage) or scaled down (shrink storage capacity) as folders and files are added to or removed from the system. This is a major advantage over traditional storage solutions—you can add or remove capacity without disrupting users or applications.
Importantly, EFS storage is permanent. When attached to an AWS compute instance, data will not disappear when that instance is relaunched.
