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Kushal
Kushal

Reputation: 71

AWS storage choice for file system S3 or EFS?

I want to use file system to store xml files being received from SFTP connection to EC2 instance. Which storage to choose S3 or EFS? Once files are stored, I want to read the files and process data. My understanding is that we should choose EFS as S3 is not recommended to mount a file system. Also, it is easy to manage directories and sub-directories permission with EFS.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1858

Answers (3)

Andi
Andi

Reputation: 394

It's hard to tell since you didn't specify the average file size, estimated storage requirements and the file usage pattern. The price difference between S3 and EFS is also an essential factor to consider.

Example:

EC2 instance receives a file, processes it immediately and store results to the database. XML is just stored for backup afterward and should be long-term archived for audit or recovery purposes.

In this case, I would recommend S3 and lifecycle policies to migrate data to the Glacier service for long-term archiving automatically.

Upvotes: 2

Ramana V V K
Ramana V V K

Reputation: 1251

The decision should depend on the budget and requirement as well

If you want to read the files and process data then you can choose EFS :

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 supports 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 are no minimum fee or setup costs, and you pay only for the storage you use.

And S3 would be an alternate solution if you want to download/upload the files/objects with different clients platforms like Android, iOS, Web etc..

Upvotes: 1

Mausam Sharma
Mausam Sharma

Reputation: 892

Yes, for your use case it would be better if you choose EFS as it is easy to use and offers a simple interface that allows you to create and configure file systems quickly and easily.

When mounted on Amazon EC2 instances, an Amazon EFS file system provides a standard file system interface and file system access semantics, allowing you to seamlessly integrate Amazon EFS with your existing applications and tools. Multiple Amazon EC2 instances can access an Amazon EFS file system at the same time, allowing Amazon EFS to provide a common data source for workloads and applications running on more than one Amazon EC2 instance.

https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/efs/

Upvotes: 0

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