A company needs a shared storage solution that can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances at the same time. Which AWS service should they use?
Amazon EFS (Recommended for most shared file workloads): Provides a fully managed Network File System (NFS) that can be mounted simultaneously by thousands of EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. It handles scaling and high availability automatically.
Amazon FSx: If the workload requires specific file systems like FSx for Windows File Server (for Windows environments using SMB) or FSx for Lustre (for high-performance computing/HPC), these also provide fully managed shared storage for multiple instances.
Amazon EBS Multi-Attach: An alternative only if they require block-level storage rather than a file system. It allows a single Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1 or io2) to be attached to up to 16 EC2 instances simultaneously, but only within the same Availability Zone and requires a cluster-aware file system to prevent data corruption.
Which EFS performance mode should be used for low-latency applications and which for highly parallel workloads?
Low-latency applications (such as web servers, content management systems, and home directories) should use the General Purpose performance mode.
Highly parallel workloads (such as big data analytics, media processing, and high-performance computing) should use the Max I/O performance mode.
What is the difference between Regional EFS and One Zone EFS?
What are the two types of encryption in Amazon EFS?
Encryption at Rest: Encrypts your data and metadata (such as file names, directory names, and directory contents) as they are written to disk. This is handled transparently using AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and must be enabled when you first create the file system.
Encryption in Transit: Encrypts data as it travels between your Amazon EFS file system and your compute clients (like EC2 instances). This is achieved using Transport Layer Security (TLS) when mounting the file system.