2.3.3. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

💡 First Principle: Amazon EFS provides a scalable, elastic, cloud-native file system that can be shared across multiple EC2 instances, simplifying shared data access for applications.

Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is a scalable, elastic, cloud-native NFS (Network File System) file system. It's designed to provide shared file storage that can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances concurrently across different Availability Zones.

Key Characteristics of Amazon EFS:

• Shared File System: Multiple EC2 instances can access the same EFS file system at the same time.
• Elastic: Automatically grows or shrinks as you add or remove files, so you only pay for the storage you use. No need to provision storage capacity upfront.
• Scalable Performance: Designed for high aggregate throughput and IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
• Multi-AZ Access: Can be mounted across multiple Availability Zones within a Region, enhancing application availability.
• POSIX Compliant: Supports the POSIX standard for file system operations, making it compatible with existing applications.
• Use Cases: Content management systems, shared development environments, media processing workflows, home directories for users, big data analytics.

Scenario: A company needs to host a web application on multiple EC2 instances. All web servers need to access the same set of shared configuration files and user-uploaded media files. They want a storage solution that scales automatically as files are added.

Reflection Question: How does Amazon EFS, by providing a scalable, elastic, and shared file system accessible across multiple EC2 instances, fundamentally simplify shared data access for applications and eliminate the need for manual storage provisioning?