Object storage vs. Block storage vs. File storage

Object storage — Amazon Simple Storage Solution(S3)

• Object storage service
• Simple web service interface
• Access via the web from anywhere
• Use of the storage of large files such as video files, images, static websites, and backup archives

Block storage — Amazon Elastic Block Storage(EBS)

• Block-level storage service for EC2
• Low latency access to data
• Accessible to a single EC2 instance at a time
• Persistence

File storage — Amazon File Storage(EFS)

• File storage service for EC2
• Concurrently accessible for up to thousands of EC2 Instances
• File system interface
• File system semantics(strong consistency, locking file, renamed file, updating, hierarchical structure)
• Replicated across Availability zone(AZs) in the region which means it’s highly available
• Don’t need to provision storage capacity or performance grows elastically to petabyte-scale
• Low latency which can support thousands of concurrent connections, throughput, and IOPs scale dynamically as required
• Pricing pay as you use model, pay per gigabyte per month of datastore
• Only supports Linux-based operating systems

Why would I use EFS?

• Content repository
• Big data
• Home directories
• Development & Testing

Nadtakan Futhoem — Sr. Software Engineer