S3 is less cost than EFS, so the answer should be on S3 not EFS

[joseph]

For the question

You are setting up a storage solution which will be accessed by over a thousand Linux servers across multiple availability zones. The storage service should maintain high performance and high durability while being able to handle rapidly changing data. In addition, it should also be highly available whenever the servers are fetching and storing data to it, with minimal management overhead. You are also required to choose a configuration management service which will ensure that all of your EC2 instances are bootstrapped with a specific analytics software at start-up.

Which of the following is the most cost-effective choice that you should use to meet the above requirement?

it is asked the most cost-effective choice, S3 is the most cost effective than EFS, but you have given it as EFS

[Jon-Bonso]

Hi Joseph,

Thanks for sharing your question. We’ve already provided an exhaustive write-up as to why S3 is not suitable for this scenario. The cost is just one of the things that you have to consider.

In this scenario, the keywords are “rapidly changing data” and “over a thousand Linux servers”.

Amazon EFS is a file storage service for use with Amazon EC2. Amazon EFS provides a file system interface, file system access semantics (such as strong consistency and file locking), and concurrently-accessible storage for up to thousands of Amazon EC2 instances. EFS provides the same level of high availability and high scalability like S3 however, this service is more suitable for scenarios where it is required to have a POSIX-compatible file system or if you are storing rapidly changing data.

Although S3 provides the same level of high availability and high scalability like EFS, this service is not suitable for storing data which are rapidly changing, just as mentioned in the above explanation. It is still more effective to use EFS as it offers strong consistency and file locking which the S3 service lacks. In addition, the AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager is primarily used to automate the process of patching managed instances with security-related updates. Hence, using the AWS Systems Manager State Manager is a better choice.

Moreover, you can also use Amazon EFS Infrequent Access (EFS IA) to further lower-down your operating cost of storage. I understand the S3 is cheaper than EFS, but once again, the cost is just one of the things you have to consider here.

Regards,

Jon Bonso