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Introducing Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)

Danilo Poccia, Technical Evangelist, AWS – @danilop

Goals and expectations for this session

•  Overall goal: Introduce you to Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

•  Session intended for all levels:

We’ll cover both beginner topics and more advanced concepts

Agenda

1.  Provide overview of EFS 2.  Introduce EFS technical concepts 3.  See how to create and use a file system 4.  Discuss file system security mechanisms 5.  Explore the EFS regional availability

and durability model

Overview of Amazon EFS

The AWS storage portfolio

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

What is Amazon EFS?

•  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 •  SSD-based •  Delivers performance for a wide variety of workloads •  Highly available and durable •  NFS v4-based

EFS is designed for a broad range of use cases, such as…

•  Content repositories •  Development environments •  Home directories •  Big data

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

We focused on changing the game

EFS is simple

EFS is elastic

EFS is scalable

1 2 3

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

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

•  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 scalable 3

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

Diving In

Some key AWS concepts to understand

•  Region •  Availability Zone (AZ) •  Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Region

•  Geographic area where AWS services are available

•  Customers choose region(s) for their AWS resources

•  Eleven regions worldwide

REGION

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

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

What is a file system?

•  The primary resource in EFS •  Where you store files and directories •  Can create unlimited file systems per account

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]

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

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

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)

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

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

Setting up a file system

Securing Your File System

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 OS directory-/file-level permissions

•  Control administrative access (API access) to file systems by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Only EC2 instances in the VPC you specify can access your EFS file system

Customer’s file system

VPC

EC2 EC2

EC2

EC2

VPC

EC2 EC2

EC2

EC2

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

EFS supports user-level file and directory access permissions

•  Set file/directory permissions to specify read-write-execute permissions for users and groups

Integration with IAM provides administrative security

•  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

Regional Availability and Durability

In what regions can I use EFS?

•  US-West (Oregon) •  US-East (Northern Virginia) •  EU (Ireland)

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

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 and writes 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

Wrapping Up

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

What to do next?

•  Learn more at aws.amazon.com/efs •  Request an invite for our Preview •  Stop by our booth if you have questions

LONDON

@danilop