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EFS

Use cases

  • Shared storage → appropriate for large data sets of larger file sizes
  • Petabyte-scale NFS filesystem → no need to provision size
  • NFS v4.0 and 4.1 (NFSv4)

Characteristics

  • Stores data at a region scope, replicating that data into at least 3 AZs within the region → < availability, > durability than EBS
  • Can be configured with either General Purpose or MaxIO performance modes
  • Mount targets appear as Endpoints in a VPC → Security Groups can control access
  • Charged for data used
Type THR Notes
EFS File system resource 10GB/s+
EFS General Purpose performance mode 35000 READ, 7000 WRITE IOPS Lowest metadata latency
EFS MaxIO performance mode 500k+ IOPS Highest metadata latency

Security

  • IAM only used for administration
  • Standard posix permissions
  • Encryption
    • EFS file systems must be encrypted at resource creation (check the Encrypted File System option)
    • Transparent encryption at rest with KMS
    • NFS over TLS is an option with the EFS mount helper (stunnel)