Amazon EFS is a new fully-managed service that makes it easy to set up and scale shared file storage in the AWS Cloud. Amazon EFS supports NFSv4, and is designed to be highly available and durable. Amazon EFS can support thousands of concurrent EC2 client connections with consistent performance, making it ideal for a wide range of use cases, including content repositories, development environments, and home directories, as well as big data applications that require on-demand scaling of file system capacity and performance. In this webinar, we’ll provide an overview of EFS, walk through the creation of a file system, discuss EFS’ availability and durability properties, and review security features. Learning Objectives: • Understand how Amazon EFS works • Identify situations when to use Amazon EFS • Learn how to create a file system • Understand EFS’ availability and durability properties • Learn how to use the security features. Who Should Attend: • Developers, Dev-Ops Engineers, IT Operations Professionals, Solution Architects, System Integrators

1. © 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Edward Naim, Principal Product Manager
April 29, 2015
Amazon EFS Webinar
Introduction to Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

2. Goals and expectations for this session
Overall goal: Introduce you to Amazon EFS (what it is, features,
how it can help you)
Webinar intended for all levels: We’ll cover both beginner topics
and more advanced concepts
We’ll do Q&A at the end: Submit questions during presentation

3. Agenda
1. Provide overview of EFS
2. Introduce EFS technical concepts
3. Walk through experience of creating a file system
4. Discuss file system security mechanisms
5. Explore the EFS regional availability and durability model

4. Overview of Amazon EFS

5. Amazon S3
• Object storage: data presented as buckets of objects
• Data access via APIs over the Internet
Amazon EFS
• File storage (analogous to NAS): data presented as a file system
• Shared low-latency access from multiple EC2 instances
Amazon
Elastic Block
Store
• Block storage (analogous to SAN): data presented as disk volumes
• Lowest-latency access from single Amazon EC2 instances
Amazon
Glacier
• Archival storage: data presented as vaults/archives of objects
• Lowest-cost storage, infrequent access via APIs over the Internet
The AWS storage portfolio

6. Fully managed file system for EC2 instances
Provides standard file system semantics
Works with standard operating system APIs
Sharable across thousands of instances
Elastically grows to petabyte scale
Delivers performance for a wide variety of workloads
Highly available and durable
NFS v4–based
What is Amazon EFS?

7. EFS is designed for a broad range of use
cases, such as…
Content repositories
Development environments
Home directories
Big data

8. Operating shared file storage today is a pain
Application owner
or developer
IT administrator
Business owner
• Estimate demand
• Procure hardware
• Set aside physical space
• Set up and maintain hardware (and network)
• Manage access and security
• Provide demand forecasts/business case
• Add lead times and extra coordination to your schedule
• Limit your flexibility and agility
• Make up-front capital investments, over-buy, stay on a
constant upgrade/refresh cycle
• Sacrifice business agility
• Distract your people from your business’s mission

9. We focused on changing the game
EFS is
simple
EFS is
elastic
EFS is
scalable
1 2 3

10. EFS is simple
Fully managed
- No hardware, network, file layer
- Create a scalable file system in seconds!
Seamless integration with existing tools and apps
- NFS v4—widespread, open
- Standard file system semantics
- Works with standard OS file system APIs
Simple pricing = simple forecasting
1

11. EFS is elastic
File systems grow and shrink automatically
as you add and remove files
No need to provision storage capacity or
performance
You pay only for the storage space you use,
with no minimum fee
2

12. File systems can grow to petabyte scale
Throughput and IOPS scale automatically
as file systems grow
Consistent low latencies regardless of file
system size
Support for thousands of concurrent NFS
connections
EFS is scalable3

13. Why does this matter?...
… to app owners
and developers?
… to your
business?
• Easy to move existing code, applications, and tools
used today with existing NFS servers to the AWS cloud
• Simple shared file storage solution for new cloud-native
applications
• Predictable pricing with no up-front investment
• Increased agility
• Spend less time managing file storage and more
time focusing on your business
… to IT
administrators?
• Eliminates need to manage and maintain file system
storage at scale

14. Diving In

15. Some key AWS concepts to understand
Region
Availability Zone (AZ)
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

16. Region
Geographic area where AWS
services are available
Customers choose region(s)
for their AWS resources
Eleven regions worldwide
REGION

17. Availability Zone (AZ)
Each region has multiple,
isolated locations known as
Availability Zones
Low-latency links between
AZs in a region
When launching an EC2
instance, a customer chooses
an AZ
AVAILABILITY ZONE 3
EC2
AVAILABILITY ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY ZONE 1
EC2
EC2
EC2
REGION

18. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Logically isolated section of the
AWS cloud, virtual network
defined by the customer
When launching instances and
other resources, customers
place them in a VPC
All new customers have a
default VPC
AVAILABILITY ZONE 1
REGION
AVAILABILITY ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY ZONE 3
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
EC2

19. What is a file system?
The primary resource in EFS
Where you store files and directories
Can create unlimited file systems per account

20. How to access a file system from an instance
You “mount” a file system on an EC2 instance (standard
command) — the file system will appear like a local set of
directories and files
An NFS v4 client is standard on Linux distributions
mount –t nfs4
[file system DNS name]:/
/[user’s target directory]

21. What is a mount target?
To access your file system
from instances in a VPC, you
create mount targets in the
VPC
A mount target is an NFSv4
endpoint in your VPC
A mount target has an IP
address and a DNS name you
use in your mount command
AVAILABILITY ZONE 1
REGION
AVAILABILITY ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY ZONE 3
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
EC2
Mount
target

22. How does it all fit together?
AVAILABILITY ZONE 1
REGION
AVAILABILITY ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY ZONE 3
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
EC2
Customer’s file
system

23. There are three ways to set up and
manage a file system
AWS Management Console
AWS Command Line Interface (CLI)
AWS Software Development Kit (SDK)

24. The AWS Management Console, CLI, and SDK each
allow you to perform a variety of management tasks
Create a file system
Create and manage mount targets
Tag a file system
Delete a file system
View details on file systems in your AWS account

25. Setting up and mounting a file system takes
under a minute
1. Create a file system
2. Create a mount target in each AZ from which you want
to access the file system
3. Enable the NFS client on your instances
4. Run the mount command

33. Securing Your File System

34. Several security mechanisms
Control network traffic to and from file systems (mount
targets) by using VPC security groups and network ACLs
Control file and directory access by using standard
Linux/Windows directory-/file-level permissions
Control administrative access (API access) to file systems
by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

35. Only EC2 instances in the VPC you specify can access
your EFS file system
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
EC2
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
EC2
Customer’s file
system

36. VPC
EC2
EC2
Security groups control which instances in your VPC
can connect to your mount targets
Customer’s file
system
Security group:
sg-allowed
Security group:
Permit inbound traffic
from “sg-allowed”
Security group:
sg-not-allowed

37. EFS supports user-level file and directory
access permissions
Set file/directory permissions to specify read-write-execute
permissions for users and groups

38. Use IAM policies to control who can use the
administrative APIs to create, manage, and
delete file systems
EFS supports action-level and resource-level
permissions
Integration with IAM provides administrative
security

39. Regional Availability
and Durability

40. In what regions can I use EFS?
US-West (Oregon)
US-East (Northern Virginia)
EU (Ireland)

41. Data is stored in multiple AZs for high availability
and durability
Every file
system object
(directory, file,
and link) is
redundantly
stored across
multiple AZs in
a region
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 1
REGION
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 3
Amazon
EFS

42. Data can be accessed from any AZ in the region
while maintaining full consistency
Your EC2 instances can
connect to your EFS file
system from any AZ in a
region
All reads will be fully
consistent in all AZs—that
is, a read in one AZ is
guaranteed to have the
latest data, even if the data
is being written in another
AZ
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 1
REGION
VPC
EC2
EC2
EC2
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 2
AVAILABILITY
ZONE 3
EC2
Write
Read

43. Wrapping Up

44. Simple and predictable pricing
With EFS, you pay only for the storage space you use
• No minimum commitments or up-front fees
• No need to provision storage in advance
• No other fees, charges, or billing dimensions
EFS price: $0.30/GB-month

45. What to do next?
Learn more at aws.amazon.com/efs
Request an invite for our Preview

46. Poll and Q&A next
Thank you!