Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Access Control

Question 1

How much throughput can a file system support?

Access Control

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage

Answer 1

The throughput available to a file system scales as a file system grows. Because file-based workloads are typically spiky – requiring high levels of throughput for periods of time and lower levels of throughput the rest of the time – Amazon EFS is designed to burst to allow high throughput levels for periods of time. All file systems deliver a consistent baseline performance of 50 MB/s per TB of storage, all file systems (regardless of size) can burst to 100 MB/s, and file systems larger than 1TB can burst to 100 MB/s per TB of storage. As you add data to your file system, the maximum throughput available to the file system scales linearly and automatically with your storage.

File system throughput is shared across all Amazon EC2 instances connected to a file system. For example, a 1TB file system that can burst to 100MB/s of throughput can drive 100MB/s from a single Amazon EC2 instance, or 10 Amazon EC2 instances can collectively drive 100MB/s. For more information, please see the documentation on File System Performance.

Question 2

How do I control which Amazon EC2 instances can access my file system?

Access Control

Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage

Answer 2

When you create a file system, you create endpoints in your VPC called “mount targets.” When mounting from an EC2 instance, your file system’s DNS name, which you provide in your mount command, resolves to a mount target’s IP address. Only resources that can access a mount target can access your file system. You can control the network traffic to and from your file system mount targets using VPC security groups.