Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) offers an easy-to-use and scalable file storage service designed for web hosting, large-scale data analysis, and content management. EFS dynamically adjusts the storage capacity without interrupting the current applications. This enables users to store and retrieve files without concerning themselves with server administration or storage limitations. An EFS can be simultaneously accessed by multiple computing instances, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), thereby serving as a common data repository for applications running on multiple servers.
We will begin this Cloud Lab by creating an EFS. We will create a mount target for this EFS in two Availability Zones (AZs) and associate them with security groups to allow inbound access from EC2 instances in the same subnet. We’ll then create two EC2 instances in the same subnets as that of the mount targets, and create the associated security groups to allow outbound access to the mount targets of the EFS. Next, we’ll mount the EFS on both of these EC2 instances. We’ll create a file inside the EFS using one of the EC2 instances and then access it using the other instance, thus demonstrating the shareability of EFS across two EC2 instances.
By the end of this Cloud Lab, you’ll have learned how to create an EFS and how to configure its settings. You’ll also have hands-on experience mounting this EFS on different EC2 instances, making changes to files inside the EFS, and sharing these changes across multiple compute instances.
