Amazon EFS FAQs

You can store petabytes of data with Amazon EFS. Amazon EFS file systems are elastic, automatically growing and shrinking as you add and remove files. There’s no need to provision file system size up front, and you pay only for what you use.

Amazon EFS supports one to thousands of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances connecting to a file system concurrently.

Please visit the Amazon EFS Limits page for more information on Amazon EFS limits.

The expected performance for your Amazon EFS file system depends on its specific configuration (for instance, storage class and thoroughput mode) and the specific file system operation type (read or write). Please see the File System Performance documentation for more information on expected latency , maximum throughput, and maximum IOPS performance for Amazon EFS file systems.

Elastic Throughput is the default throughput mode and is suitable for most file workloads. With the default Elastic Throughput mode, performance automatically scales with your workload activity, and you only pay for the throughput you use (data transferred for your file systems per month). Elastic Throughput is ideal if you’re unsure of your application’s peak throughput needs or if your application is very spiky, with a low baseline activity (such that it uses less than 5% of capacity on average when you provision for peak needs).

You can optionally change your throughput mode to Provisioned Throughput if you know your workload’s peak throughput requirements and you expect your workload to consume a higher share (more than 5% on average) of your application’s peak throughput capacity.

The amount of throughput you can deliver depends on the throughput mode you choose. Please see the documentation on File System Performance for more information.  Please visit File System Performance for more information.

You can monitor your file system using Amazon CloudWatch or from the Monitoring tab in the Amazon EFS Console. Please visit the documentation on Monitoring Amazon EFS for more information.

Amazon EFS offers two file system types that you can choose from based on your durability and availability needs. EFS Regional file systems (recommended) offer the highest levels of durability and availability by storing data with and across multiple Availability Zones (AZs). EFS One Zone file systems store data redundantly within a single AZ, so data in these file systems will be unavailable and might be lost during a disaster or other fault within the AZ.

Amazon EFS is designed to provide 99.999999999% (11 nines) of durability over a given year. EFS Regional file systems are designed to sustain data if an AZ is lost. Because EFS One Zone file systems store data in a single AZ, data stored in these storage classes might be lost during a disaster or other fault within the AZ.  

As with any environment, the best practice is to have a backup and to put in place safeguards against accidental deletion. For Amazon EFS data, the best practice includes replicating your file system across Regions using Amazon EFS Replication, and a functioning, regularly tested backup using AWS Backup. File systems using EFS One Zone storage classes are configured to automatically back up files by default at file system creation.

Every EFS Regional file system object (such as directory, file, and link) is redundantly stored across multiple AZs. With EFS One Zone file systems, your data is redundantly stored within a single AZ. Amazon EFS is designed to sustain concurrent device failures by quickly detecting and repairing any lost redundancy.  

EFS file system data is accessed using AZ-specific EFS mount targets, which are designed to be highly available within an AZ. EFS Regional file systems support concurrent access from EFS mount targets in all AZs in the Region where they are located. That means you can architect your application to failover from one AZ to other AZs in the Region to achieve the highest level of application availability. EFS One Zone file systems support only one highly available EFS mount target in a single AZ, which means data may become unavailable during a disaster or other fault within that AZ. For more information on availability, see the Amazon EFS Service Level Agreement.

EFS One Zone file systems are not resilient to a complete AZ outage. During an AZ outage, you will experience a loss of availability, because your file system data is not replicated to a different AZ. During a disaster or fault within an AZ affecting all copies of your data, you might experience loss of data that has not been protected using EFS Backups or EFS Replication. EFS Backups are enabled by default for all EFS One Zone file systems.

Amazon EFS offers three storage classes: EFS Standard, EFS Infrequent Access, and EFS Archive. Data that is frequently accessed tends to have higher performance needs, so EFS provides an SSD-powered EFS Standard class designed to deliver sub-millisecond latencies. For data that’s infrequently accessed, you can use EFS’s two cost-optimized storage classes that provide low double-digit millisecond latencies: EFS Infrequent Access (IA), designed for data accessed only a few times a quarter, and EFS Archive, designed for data accessed a few times a year or less. EFS IA offers an up to 95% lower cost than EFS Standard for infrequently accessed data. Providing a more cost-optimized experience for even colder data, EFS Archive offers an up to 50% lower cost than EFS Infrequent Access, with a higher request charge when that data is accessed. EFS Archive is optimized for and supported on EFS Regional file systems using EFS’s default Elastic Throughput mode. See EFS storage classes and EFS Pricing for more information.

By enabling EFS Lifecycle Management, you can automatically tier files between storage classes based on your access patterns. The default, recommended lifecycle policy will tier files from EFS Standard to EFS IA after 30 consecutive days without access and to EFS Archive after 90 consecutive days without access. You can also specify a custom policy for transitioning files between storage classes based on the number of days since a file’s last access.

You can also enable EFS Intelligent-Tiering to promote files from EFS IA and EFS Archive back to EFS Standard when they are accessed, which provides subsequent reads of those files with the faster, sub-millisecond latencies of EFS Standard. Once promoted, these files will transition back to the appropriate IA or Archive storage class based on your lifecycle policy.

Compared to the EFS Standard class, EFS IA and Archive offer the same throughput and IOPS scalability but with higher first-byte latencies (i.e., low double-digit millisecond read latencies vs. sub-millisecond read latencies on EFS Standard). For more information, see the Amazon EFS performance documentation.

EFS IA has no minimum storage duration. Data that is tiered to EFS Archive has a minimum storage duration of 90 days. Files deleted or truncated prior to the minimum duration will incur a pro-rated charge for the remaining days, based on the size of the file prior to the corresponding action.

EFS’s cost-optimized storage classes (IA, Archive) are designed for storing colder, inactive data, which is typically comprised of larger files. There is no minimum file size for IA or Archive, but files tiered to these storage classes that are smaller than 128 KiB will incur storage charges as if they were 128 KiB.

Amazon EFS Replication copies your file system data into a new or existing file system in the Region of your choice. It keeps the two file systems synchronized by automatically transferring only incremental changes without requiring additional infrastructure or a custom process. EFS Replication is designed to provide a recovery point objective (RPO) and a recovery time objective (RTO) of minutes, helping you meet your compliance and business continuity goals.

You should use EFS Replication to maintain a replica of your file system many miles apart for disaster recovery, compliance, or business continuity planning. In the event of a disaster, you can failover to your replica file system, and resume operations for your business-critical applications within minutes. Once the disaster event is over, you can failback by transferring only incremental changes from your replica back to your original file system. While EFS Replication is enabled, your applications can use the replica file system in read-only mode for low network latency cross-Region access. With Amazon EFS Replication, you can configure your replica file system independent of your original file system to use cost-optimized storage classes and shorter age-off lifecycle management policy to save up to 92% on your costs. EFS Replication also makes it streamlined to monitor and alarm on your RPO status using Amazon CloudWatch.

No. EFS Replication doesn't provide point-in-time consistent replication. EFS Replication publishes a timestamp metric on Amazon CloudWatch called TimeSinceLastSync. All changes made to your source file system at least as of the published time will be copied over to the replica. Changes to your source file system after the recorded time might not have be replicated over. You can monitor the health of your EFS Replication using Amazon CloudWatch. If you interrupt the replication process due to a disaster recovery event, files from the source file system might have transferred but are not yet copied to their final locations. These files and their contents can be found on your replica file system in a lost+found directory created by EFS Replication under the root directory.

Amazon EFS Backup is powered by AWS Backup, which is a fully managed backup service that centrally manages and automates backups of your Amazon EFS file systems. It protects your file system against a data loss event by making incremental copies of your file system in a centralized location automatically, on a schedule. AWS Backup provides a centralized console, automated backup scheduling, backup retention management, and restore activity. To learn more please read the AWS Backup documentation or FAQs.

Amazon EFS is natively integrated with AWS Backup. You can use the EFS console, API, and AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) to enable automatic backups, which uses a default backup plan with the AWS Backup recommended settings. During the initial backup, a copy of the entire file system is made in the backup vault. All subsequent backups of that file system are incremental in nature, i.e. only files and directories that have been changed, added, or removed are copied. With each incremental backup, AWS Backup retains the necessary reference data to allow a full restore. In the event of data loss, you can perform a full or partial restore of your file system using the AWS Backup console or the CLI.   

You control which EC2 instances can access your file system using VPC security group rules and IAM policies. Use VPC security groups to control the network traffic to and from your file system. Attach an IAM policy to your file system to control which clients can mount your file system and with what permissions, and use EFS Access Points to manage application access. Control access to files and directories with POSIX-compliant user and group-level permissions .

Using the Amazon EFS console, you can apply common policies to your file system, such as disabling root access, enforcing read-only access, or enforcing that all connections to your file system are encrypted. You can also apply more advanced policies , such as granting access to specific IAM roles, including those in other AWS accounts.

 

An EFS Access Point is a network endpoint that users and applications can use to access an EFS file system and enforce file- and folder- level permissions (POSIX) based on fine-grained access control and policy-based permissions defined in IAM.

EFS Access Points gives you the flexibility to create and manage multi-tenant environments for your file applications in a cloud-native way, helping you simplify data sharing. Unlike traditional POSIX ACLs to control file system access, or Kerberos to control authentication, both requiring complex set-up, management, and maintenance, and which often introduce risk, EFS Access Points integrates with IAM to enable cloud native applications to use POSIX-based shared file storage. Use cases that can benefit from Amazon EFS Access Points include container-based environments where developers build and deploy their own containers, data science applications that require access to production data, and sharing a specific directory in your file system with other AWS accounts.

When you create an Amazon EFS Access Point, you can configure an operating system user and group, and a root directory for all connections that use it. If you specify the root directory’s owner, EFS will automatically create it with the permissions you provide the first time a client connects to the access point. You can also update your file system’s IAM policy to apply to your access points. For example, you can apply a policy that requires a specific IAM identity in order to connect to a given access point. For more information, see the Amazon EFS user guide.

Amazon EFS offers the ability to encrypt data at rest and in transit.

Data encrypted at rest is transparently encrypted while being written, and transparently decrypted while being read, so you don’t have to modify your applications. Encryption keys are managed by the AWS KMS, eliminating the need to build and maintain a secure key management infrastructure.

Data encryption in transit uses industry-standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 to encrypt data sent between your clients and EFS file systems.

Encryption of data at rest and data in transit can be configured together or separately to help meet your unique security requirements.

For more details, see the user documentation on Encryption.

AWS KMS is a managed service that makes it easier for you to create and control the encryption keys used to encrypt your data. AWS KMS is integrated with AWS services, including EFS, EBS, and S3, making it simpler to encrypt your data with encryption keys that you manage. AWS KMS  is also integrated with AWS CloudTrail  to provide you with logs of all key usage to help meet your regulatory and compliance needs.

You can enable encryption at rest in the EFS console by using the CLI or SDKs. When creaking a new file system in the EFS console, select “Create File System” and then select the checkbox to enable encryption.

Data can be encrypted in transit between your Amazon EFS file system and its clients by using the Amazon EFS mount helper.

Encryption of data at rest and data in transit can be configured together or separately to help meet your unique security requirements.

For more details, see the user documentation on Encryption.

Encrypting your data has a minimal effect on I/O latency and throughput.

Change to To access EFS file systems from on premises, you must have a Direct Connect  or AWS VPN  connection between your on-premises datacenter and your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

You mount an Amazon EFS file system on your on-premises Linux server using the standard Linux mount command for mounting a file system using the NFS v4.1 protocol.

For more information about accessing Amazon EFS file systems from on-premises servers, see the documentation .

You can mount your Amazon EFS file systems on your on-premises servers, and move file data to and from Amazon EFS using standard Linux tools and scripts or AWS DataSync. The ability to move file data to and from Amazon EFS file systems allows for three use cases.

First, you can migrate data from on-premises datacenters to permanently reside in EFS file systems.

Second, you can support cloud bursting workloads to off-load your application processing to the cloud. You can move data from your on-premises servers into your Amazon EFS file systems, analyze it on a cluster of EC2 instances in your Amazon VPC, and store the results permanently in your Amazon EFS file systems or move the results back to your on-premises servers.

Third, you can periodically copy your on-premises file data to Amazon EFS to support backup and disaster recovery scenarios.

Yes. You can access your Amazon EFS file system concurrently from servers in your on-premises datacenter as well as EC2 instances in your Amazon VPC. Amazon EFS provides the same file system access semantics, such as strong data consistency and file locking, across all EC2 instances and on-premises servers accessing a file system.

Because of the propagation delay tied to data traveling over long distances, the network latency of the network connection between your on-premises datacenter and your Amazon VPC can be tens of milliseconds. If your file operations are serialized, the latency of the network connection directly impacts your read and write throughput; in essence, the volume of data you can read or write during a period of time is bounded by the amount of time it takes for each read and write operation to complete. To maximize your throughput, parallelize your file operations so that multiple reads and writes are processed by Amazon EFS concurrently. Standard tools like GNU parallel help you to parallelize the copying of file data. For more information, see the online documentation .

There are a number of methods to copy existing on-premises data into Amazon EFS. AWS DataSync provides a fast and simple way to securely sync existing file systems into EFS and works over any network, including AWS Direct Connect.

AWS Direct Connect provides a high-bandwidth and lower-latency dedicated network connection over which you can mount your EFS file systems. Once mounted, you can use DataSync to copy data into EFS up to 10 times faster than standard Linux copy tools.

For more information on AWS DataSync, see the Data transfer section of this FAQ.

DataSync  is an online data transfer service that makes it faster and simpler to move data between on-premises storage and Amazon EFS. DataSync uses a purpose-built protocol to accelerate and secure transfer over the internet or Direct Connect, at speeds up to 10 times faster than open-source tools. Using DataSync, you can perform one-time data migrations, transfer on-premises data for timely in-cloud analysis, and automate replication to AWS for data protection and recovery.

AWS Transfer Family  is a fully managed file transfer service that provides support for Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), File Transfer Protocol over SSL (FTPS), and File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The AWS Transfer Family provides you with a fully managed, highly available file transfer service with auto scaling capabilities, eliminating the need for you to manage file transfer–related infrastructure. Your end users’ workflows remain unchanged, while data uploaded and downloaded over the chosen protocols is stored in your Amazon EFS file system.

To get started with DataSync, you can use the console or CLI to connect the agent to your on-premises or in-cloud file systems using the Network File System (NFS) protocol, select your Amazon EFS file system, and start copying data. You must first deploy a software agent that is available for download from the console, except when copying files between two Amazon EFS file systems.

To get started with AWS Transfer Family, first ensure that your file system’s directories are accessible by the POSIX users that you plan to assign to AWS Transfer. Then you can use the console, CLI, or API to create a Transfer Family endpoint and user(s). Once complete, your end users can use their SFTP, FTP, or FTPS clients to access data stored in your Amazon EFS file system.

You can use DataSync to transfer files between two Amazon EFS file systems, including ones in different AWS Regions. AWS Transfer Family endpoints must be in the same Region as your Amazon EFS file system.

Yes. You can use DataSync to copy files to an Amazon EFS file system in another AWS account.

You can also configure your Amazon EFS file system to be accessed by AWS Transfer Family using another account as long as the account has been granted permissions to do so. To learn more about granting Transfer Family permissions to external AWS accounts via file system policies, see the documentation .

EFS is integrated with a number of other AWS services, including CloudWatch, AWS CloudFormation, CloudTrail, IAM, and AWS tagging services.

CloudWatch helps you monitor file system activity using metrics. CloudFormation helps you create and manage file systems using templates.

CloudTrail helps you record all EFS API calls in log files.

IAM helps you control who can administer your file system. AWS tagging services helps you label your file systems with metadata that you define.

You can plan and manage your Amazon EFS file system costs by using AWS Budgets. You can work with AWS Budgets from the AWS Billing and Cost Management console. To use AWS Budgets , you create a monthly cost budget for your Amazon EFS file systems.

Locking in Amazon EFS follows the NFS v4.1 protocol for advisory locking and allows your applications to use both whole file and byte range locks.

Every file system has an automatically generated ID number that is globally unique. You can tag your file system with a name, and these names don’t need to be unique.

With Amazon EFS, you pay only for the primary and backup storage you use and for your read, write, and tiering activity to your EFS file system. You pay for read and write access using Elastic Throughput (but you can optionally provision throughput performance up-front using Provisioned Throughput), and for tiering data to EFS’s Infrequent Access and Archive storage classes.

Amazon EFS offers three storage classes: EFS Standard, which delivers sub-millisecond latency performance for actively-used data; EFS Infrequent Access (EFS IA), which is cost-optimized for data accessed only a few times a quarter; and EFS Archive, which is cost-optimized for long-lived data accessed a few times a year or less.

EFS also offers data protection for your files with EFS Backup and EFS Replication. With EFS Backup, you pay only for the amount of backup storage you use and the amount of backup data you restore in the month. There is no minimum fee and there are no setup charges. Visit AWS Backup to learn more. Use EFS Replication to replicate your file system to a Region or Availability Zone (AZ) of your choice without having to manage additional infrastructure or custom processes.

You can estimate your monthly bill using the Amazon EFS Pricing Calculator.

There are no setup charges or commitments to begin using Amazon EFS. At the end of the month, you will automatically be charged for that month’s usage. You can view your charges for the current billing period at any time by logging into your Amazon Web Services account, and selecting the 'Billing Dashboard' associated with your console profile.

With the AWS Free Usage Tier*, your usage for the Free Tier is calculated each month across all AWS Regions except the AWS GovCloud Region and automatically applied to your bill; unused monthly usage will not roll over to the next month. Upon sign up, new EFS customers receive 5 GB of Amazon EFS Standard each month for one year. The AWS Free Tier is not applicable to files stored in the EFS One Zone file system type. Restrictions apply; see offer terms for more details.

Amazon EFS charges you for the following types of usage. Note that the calculations below assume there is no AWS Free Tier in place.

Storage Used:

The Amazon EFS amount billed in a month is based on storage, throughput, and data protection usage in a month. The storage costs are calculated based on the average storage space used throughout the month. Your storage usage is measured in "GB-Month," which are added up at the end of the month to generate your monthly charges. 

The following example reflects a scenario where your file access patterns change over time, and includes each of EFS IA and EFS Archive's pricing dimensions. The example assumes that the two EFS Lifecycle policies to move files between EFS Standard, EFS Infrequent Access (IA), and EFS Archive are set.

Assume that your file system is located in the US East (N. Virginia) Region. At the beginning of a 31-day month, your file system stores 200 GB of files on EFS Standard, 500 GB of files on EFS IA, and 2 TB of files on EFS Archive. On the 15th day of the month, EFS Lifecycle Management, without Intelligent Tiering, moves 50% of your EFS Standard files to the EFS IA class and 10% of your EFS IA files to the EFS Archive class after 14 days of having not been accessed. On average, your client application reads 200 GB of files from your EFS IA and 100 GB of files from your EFS Archive each month.

First, we calculate the pro-rated storage usage:

Standard Storage:
200 GB of EFS Standard storage for 14 days (GB-Hours): 200 GB x 14 days x (24 hours / day) = 67,200 GB-Hours
100 GB of EFS Standard storage for 17 days (GB-Hours): 100 GB x 17 days x (24 hours / day) = 40,800 GB-Hours
Total EFS Standard storage usage (GB-Hours): 67,200 GB-Hours + 40,800 GB-Hours = 108,000 GB-Hours

IA Storage:
500 GB of EFS IA for 14 days (GB-Hours): 500 GB x 14 x (24 hours / day) = 168,000 GB-Hours
100 GB of files from EFS Standard to EFS IA for 17 days (GB-Hours) = 100 GB x 17 x (24 hours / day) = 40,800 GB-Hours
450 GB of EFS IA (after 50 GB is moved to EFS Archive) = 450 GB x 17 x (24 hours / day) = 183,600 GB-Hours

Total EFS IA usage (GB-Hours): 168,000 GB-Hours + 40,800 GB-Hours + 326,400 GB-Hours = 392,400 GB-Hours

Archive Storage:
2 TB of EFS IA for 31 days (GB-Hours): 1,000 GB x 14 x (24 hours / day) = 1,488,000 GB-Hours
50 GB of files from EFS IA to EFS Archive for 17 days (GB-Hours): 50 GB x 17 x (24 hours / day) = 20,400 GB-Hours
Total EFS Archive storage usage (GB-Hours): 1,488,000 GB-Hours + 20,400 GB-Hours = 1,508,400 GB-Hours

Next, we convert the storage usage into GB-months and calculate the storage charge:
Total EFS Standard charge: 108,000 GB-Hours x (1 month / 744 hours) x $0.30/GB-month = $43.55
Total EFS IA charge: 392,400 GB-Hours x (1 month / 744 hours) x $0.0165/GB-month = $8.70
Total EFS Archive charge: 1,508,400 GB-Hours x (1 month / 744 hours) x $0.008/GB-month = $16.22
Total EFS storage charge: $43.55 + $8.70 + $16.22 = $68.47

Next, we calculate the access charges for files in EFS IA and EFS Archive:

IA Data Tiering:
Data Tiering (files moved from EFS Standard to EFS IA): 100 GB * $0.01/GB = $1.00
IA read access charge: 200 GB * $0.01/GB = $2.00

Elastic Throughput read charge: 200 GB * $0.03/GB = $6.00

Total EFS IA tiering and access charges: $1.00 + $2.00 + $6.00 = $9.00

Archive Data Tiering:
Data Tiering (files moved from Infrequent Access to Archive): 50 GB * $0.03/GB = $1.50
Archive read access charge: 100 GB *$0.03/GB = $3.00

Elastic Throughput read charge: 100 GB * $0.03/GB = $3.00

Total EFS IA tiering and access charges: $1.50 + $3.00 + $3.00 = $7.50

Total EFS tiering and access charge: $9.00 + $7.50 = $16.50

Finally, we calculate the total EFS charge for the month:

Total monthly charges = Total storage charge + Total access charge = $68.47 + $16.50 = $84.97 (TCO - $0.0315/GB)

You can access your data for read and write operations using Elastic Throughput. With Elastic Throughput, performance automatically scales with your workload activity, and you only pay for the throughput you use (data transferred for your file systems per month). The Elastic Throughput amount billed in a month is based on the read and write data transferred within a month and measured in “GB transferred.”

You can use Provisioned Throughput if you know your application’s throughput usage and peak throughput requirements. Provisioned Throughput amount billed in a month is based on the average throughput provisioned in excess of what your EFS Standard allows for the month, up to the prevailing Bursting baseline throughput limits in the AWS Region, and measured in "MB/s-Month."

Elastic Throughput Example:

Assume your file system is located in the US East (N. Virginia) Region and has 100 GB of EFS Standard storage, for the entirety of a 31-day month. Assume that your workload’s data transfer is 75% read operations and 25% write operations, drives a peak throughput of 100 MB/s for 3 hours a day and 3 days a week, and is idle for the remainder of the time.  

Total monthly Elastic Throughput charge

Assuming all of your data transferred is to EFS Standard Storage, at the end of the month, you would have the following usage in GB:

Total Elastic Throughput Data (GB) in the month: 100 MB/s x (60 minutes x 60 seconds x 3 hours) x 3 days x 4 weeks/1000 = 12,960 GB 
Total Elastic Throughput Read Data (GB): 75% x 12,960 GB = 9,720 GB
Total Elastic Throughput Write Data (GB): 25% x 12,960 GB = 3,240 GB

We then calculate the total monthly charges for Elastic Throughput: 

Elastic Throughput Read Data charges: 9,720 GB x $0.03/GB = $291.60 
Elastic Throughput Write Data charges: 3,240 GB x $0.06/GB = $194.40
We then calculate the total monthly charges for Elastic Throughput:
Total Monthly Elastic Throughput Charge = $291.60 + $194.40 = $486.00

Provisioned Throughput Example:

Assuming the same assumptions as the Elastic Throughput example above (your file system is located in the US East (N. Virginia) Region and has 100 GB of EFS Standard storage, for the entirety of a 31-day month. Assume that your workload’s data transfer is 75% read operations and 25% write operations, drives a peak throughput of 100 MB/s for 3 hours a day and 3 days a week, and
is idle for the remainder of the time). The throughput amount billed in a month is based on the average throughput provisioned in excess of what your EFS Standard storage allows for the month (50 KBps of Baseline throughput per 1 GB of Standard storage)

Baseline throughput (MB/s-Month) =100 GB standard storage * 50 KBps/1000 = 5 MB/s-Month.
Total billable Provisioned Throughput (MB/s-Month) = Throughput Configured –
Baseline throughput = 100 MB/s-Month – 5 MB/s-Month = 95 MB/s-Month
Total monthly Provisioned Throughput Charge = 95 MB/s-Month * $6/MB/s-month = $570.00

You may optionally use EFS Replication or AWS Backup to protect your data. With EFS Replication, you pay for the storage, access charges from Infrequent Access and Archive classes, and data transfer changes if your destination file system is in a different AWS Region. With AWS Backup, you pay for the average amount of data backed up and restored in a month.

Replication

This example reflects a scenario where you are replicating file systems across Regions using EFS Replication. The example is focused on costs directly related to EFS Replication.

Assume you have an EFS file system in the US East (North Virginia) Region with 1 TB of data. This file system is being replicated to the US West (Oregon) Region. Assume the destination file system uses a 7-day EFS Lifecycle Management Policy to move files into the EFS IA class.

When replication is first turned on, the entire source file system is copied to the destination file system. The replicated data will first land in the EFS Standard class in the destination file system. If files aren’t accessed for the duration of the EFS Lifecycle Management policy (7 days), they will move to the EFS IA class.

Initial sync:

First, we calculate the pro-rated storage usage for the destination file system:
Total EFS Standard usage (GB-hours): 1,000 GB * 7 days * (24 hours / day) = 168,000 GB-hours
Total EFS IA usage (GB-hours): 1,000 GB * 24 days * (24 hours / day / 31-day month) = 576,000 GB-hours

Next, we convert the storage usage into GB-months and calculate the storage charge for the destination file system:

Total EFS Standard charge: 168,000 * (1 month / 744 hours) * $0.30/GB-month = $67.74
Total EFS IA charge: 576,000 * (1 month / 744 hours) * $0.025/GB-month = $19.36
Total storage charges for initial sync = $67.74 + $19.36 = $87.10
Then we calculate the Data transfer charges for the source file system’s initial replication to the destination file system:
Total EFS Replication data transfer charges for 1 TB of data: 1,000 GB * $0.02/GB = $20.00

Total charges for initial sync = Total storage charges for initial sync + Total data transfer charges for initial sync = $87.10 + $20.00 = $107.10

Incremental replication:

Consider that the source file systems add 150 GB of new data after 7 days. The new data will be replicated to the destination file system and will reside in the EFS Standard class for 7 days based on the Lifecycle Management Policy as before. The pro-rated storage usage for 150 GB of new data is calculated as follows:

Total EFS Standard usage (GB-hours): 150 GB * 7 days * (24 hours / day) = 25,200 GB-hours
Total EFS IA usage (GB-hours): 150 GB * 17 days * (24 hours / day) = 61,200 GB-hours

Next, we convert the storage usage into GB-months and calculate the storage charge for the 150 GB of new data added to the destination file system: 

Total EFS Standard charge: 25,200 * (1 month / 744 hours) * $0.30/GB-month = $10.16
Total EFS IA charge: 61,200 * (1 month / 744 hours) * $0.025/GB-month = $2.06
Total storage charges for incremental replication = $10.16 + $2.06 = $12.22

Lastly, we calculate the data transfer charges for 150 GB of incremental data:

Total data transfer charges for incremental replication: 150 GB * $0.02/GB = $3.00
Total charges for incremental replication = Total storage charges for incremental replication + Total data transfer charges for incremental replication = $12.22 + $3.00 = $15.22

Total charges related to EFS Replication = Total charges for initial sync + Total charges for incremental replication = $107.10 + $15.22 = $122.32

Backup

See AWS Backup Pricing for Backup pricing examples.

For more EFS pricing information, visit the Amazon EFS Pricing page.

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The example solution below illustrates the Amazon EFS TCO and the effective TCO of Amazon EFS considering storage and throughput elasticity. With Amazon EFS, storage and throughput scales up and down automatically, and you never pay for unused storage or throughput capacity. EFS automatically replicates data across multiple AZs for high availability and durability, and automatically tiers the data across hot and cold storage classes to optimize costs.

Alternatively, a non-elastic (provisioned) cloud solution requires you to manage storage and throughput capacity at the peak usage and doesn’t allow for a capacity reduction. Most provisioned solution providers recommend to maintain a 30-50% storage utilization to account for storage growth and a 50% throughput utilization to account for spiky throughput. If we compare EFS’s elastic model, which doesn’t require any additional unused storage or throughput, the effective TCO is up to 60% cheaper.

Example 1 - General Purpose workload
Assume that your file system is located in the US East (N. Virginia) Region and contains an average storage size of 2.7 TB for a given month. Your application performs bursts of read operations with a peak throughput of 25 MBps, totaling 300 GB of data transferred within a month.

With EFS, this application would store an average 5% of the storage (145 TB) in SSD, ~20% of storage (527 TB) in Infrequent Access, and the remaining 2,027 TB of storage in Archive, totaling $68.47 for storage costs. Additionally, the workload is charged $2.50 for tiering the colder data to the Infrequent Access and Archive classes, and $14.00 for Elastic Throughput costs to transfer 300 GB of data, delivering a TCO of $0.0315/GB-mo.

With a Provisioned cloud solution, the application can benefit from storage optimizations such as compression to reduce the total storage size by 50% (1,350 TB). Based on the usage patterns, we expect 5% of the hot data (68 TB) to be stored in SSD. Since this is a provisioned cloud solution and doesn’t automatically scale up/down, we recommend to operate at 50% storage utilization and provision 136 TB. The remaining 95% of the storage (1,282 TB) is stored in a colder storage class, equaling $90.15 for storage costs. Additionally, we provision 50 MBps for throughput based on the recommendation to operate throughput at 50% utilization, delivering a TCO of $0.0797/GB-mo.

 

	EFS	Provisioned solution
Storage
Average Total Storage (GB-mo)	2,700	2,700
Average Total Paid Storage (GB-mo)	2,700	*1,350
SSD-based storage (GB-mo)	145	**136
IA Storage (GB-mo)	527	**1,282
Archive Storage (GB-mo)	2,027	0
SSD Storage ($/mo)	$43.55	$34.00
Cold Storage ($/mo)	$8.70	$56.15
Archive Storage ($/mo)	$16.22
Total storage cost	$68.47	$90.15
Data Tiering	$2.50
Throughput
Throughput provisioned (MBps)		***50
Total data transferred (GB)	300
Throughput Cost	$14.00	$125.00
Total Cost	$84.97	$215.15
Effective $/GB	$0.0315	$0.0797
EFS Savings (%)	60%

*Assumes a 50% storage reduction benefit from optimizations such as compression

**Assumes 5% of the compressed data is stored in the SSD class, provisioned to run at 50% utilization, and charged at a rate of $0.25/GB-mo. The remaining 95% of the compressed data is stored in a colder storage class at a rate of $0.0483/GB-mo.
***Assumes throughput is provisioned at 50% utilization at a rate of $2.50/MBps.

 

 

Example 2 - Scratch data workload

Assume that your stock market modeling workload runs analytics for two hours a day and requires ephemeral data to be stored for the two hours of run time. Assume your file system is located in the US East (N. Virginia) Region and contains an average SSD storage size of 1,024 GB during the two hour run time. Your application performs bursts of read and write operations with a peak throughput of 500 MBps, totaling 175 GB of data transferred each day.

With EFS, this application would store data for 60 hours each month (2 hours each day for 30 days) in SSD and transfer 5,250 GB of data, resulting in a total cost of $222.48/mo.

With a Provisioned cloud solution, the file system can benefit from storage optimizations such as compression to reduce the storage footprint by 50% but requires to configure an additional 30% buffer to support peak storage (1,024 GB * 50% compression + 30% buffer = 666 GB), resulting in a total cost of $1,416.50/mo.

With EFS’s elasticity benefit, you only pay for what you use, with a TCO savings of 84%.

 

	EFS	Provisioned solution
Storage
Total Storage (GB-mo)	1,024	***666
SSD Storage hours per month	*60	720
SSD monthly storage cost ($/mo)	$25.60	$166.50
Throughput
Throughput provisioned (MBps)		500
Data transferred per month (GB)	5,250
Throughput Cost	**$196.88	$1,250.00
Total Cost	$222.48	$1,416.50
Effective $/GB	$0.2172	$1.3822
EFS Savings (%)	84%

* Assumes EFS data is stored for 2 hours a day for 30 days.

** Assumes a blended Elastic Throughput cost of $0.0375/Gb transferred

***Assumes a 50% storage reduction benefit from optimizations such as compression and an additional 30% buffer to support peak usage

Yes. You can access EFS from containerized applications launched by Amazon ECS using both EC2 and Fargate launch types by referencing an EFS file system in your task definition. Find instructions for getting started in the ECS documentation .

Yes. You can access EFS from containerized applications launched by Amazon EKS , with either EC2  or Fargate  launch types, using the EFS CSI driver. Find instructions for getting started in the EKS documentation .

Yes. You can access EFS from functions running in Lambda  by referencing an EFS file system in your function settings. Find instructions for getting started in the Lambda documentation .

Yes. You can access training data in EFS from Amazon SageMaker training jobs by referencing an EFS file system in your CreateTrainingJob request . EFS is also automatically used for home directories created by SageMaker Studio .