Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | General Flashcards
What is Amazon Elastic File System?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Amazon EFS is a fully-managed service that makes it easy to set up and scale file storage in the Amazon cloud. With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can create file systems that are accessible to Amazon EC2 instances via a file system interface (using standard operating system file I/O APIs) and that support full file system access semantics (such as strong consistency and file locking).
Amazon EFS file systems can automatically scale from gigabytes to petabytes of data without needing to provision storage. Tens, hundreds, or even thousands of Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, and Amazon EFS provides consistent performance to each Amazon EC2 instance. Amazon EFS is designed to be highly durable and highly available. With Amazon EFS, there is no minimum fee or setup costs, and you pay only for the storage you use.
What use cases is Amazon EFS intended for?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Amazon EFS is designed to provide performance for a broad spectrum of workloads and applications, including Big Data and analytics, media processing workflows, content management, web serving, and home directories.
When should I use Amazon EFS vs. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) vs. Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers cloud storage services to support a wide range of storage workloads.
Amazon EFS is a file storage service for use with Amazon EC2. Amazon EFS provides a file system interface, file system access semantics (such as strong consistency and file locking), and concurrently-accessible storage for up to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances.
Amazon EBS is a block level storage service for use with Amazon EC2. Amazon EBS can deliver performance for workloads that require the lowest-latency access to data from a single EC2 instance.
Amazon S3 is an object storage service. Amazon S3 makes data available through an Internet API that can be accessed anywhere.
What regions is Amazon EFS currently available in?
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Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Please refer to Regional Products and Services for details of Amazon EFS service availability by region.
How do I get started using Amazon EFS?
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Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
To use Amazon EFS, you must have an Amazon Web Services account. If you do not already have an AWS account, you can create one by clicking the “Try the Free Tier” button on the Amazon EFS detail page.
Once you have created an AWS account, please refer to the Amazon EFS Getting Started guide to begin using Amazon EFS. You can create a file system via the AWS Management Console, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), and Amazon EFS API (and various language-specific SDKs).
How do I access a file system from an Amazon EC2 instance?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
To access your file system, you mount the file system on an Amazon EC2 Linux-based instance using the standard Linux mount command and the file system’s DNS name. Once you’ve mounted, you can work with the files and directories in your file system just like you would with a local file system.
Amazon EFS uses the NFSv4.1 protocol. For a step-by-step example of how to access a file system from an Amazon EC2 instance, please see the Amazon EFS Getting Started guide.
What Amazon EC2 instance types and AMIs work with Amazon EFS?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Amazon EFS is compatible with all Linux-based AMIs for Amazon EC2. You can mix and match the instance types connected to a single file system. For a step-by-step example of how to access a file system from an Amazon EC2 instance, please see the Amazon EFS Getting Started guide.
How do I manage a file system?
General
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) | Storage
Amazon EFS is a fully-managed service, so all of the file storage infrastructure is managed for you. When you use Amazon EFS, you avoid the complexity of deploying and maintaining complex file system infrastructure. An Amazon EFS file system grows and shrinks automatically as you add and remove files, so you do not need to manage storage procurement or provisioning.
You can administer a file system via the AWS Management Console, the AWS command-line interface (CLI), or the Amazon EFS API (and various language-specific SDKs). The Console, API, and SDK provide the ability to create and delete file systems, configure how file systems are accessed, create and edit file system tags, and display detailed information about file systems.
