What is Amazon EFS used for?

Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic NFS file system from AWS that provides shared file storage to AWS compute instances. It is a good fit for sharing files between several EC2 instances.

How much does Amazon EFS cost?

Amazon EFS is a paid product with no free plan. A free trial is available.

Is Amazon EFS open source?

No. Amazon EFS is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Amazon EFS include SeaweedFS, Ceph and JuiceFS.

What are some alternatives to Amazon EFS?

Amazon EFS competes with Azure Files, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Amazon EFS alternatives.

Amazon EFS: features, pricing and alternatives

About Amazon EFS

Amazon Elastic File System, or EFS, is a managed file storage service from Amazon Web Services. It provides an elastic NFS file system that AWS compute instances can mount, so applications can share data without anyone having to run file servers.

The service is described as simple, scalable and fully managed. Storage capacity grows and shrinks as files are added and removed, which avoids provisioning capacity in advance. It is a proprietary AWS service, and its costs are covered on the AWS pricing page for EFS.

Key features

Managed elastic NFS file system
Shared file storage for AWS compute
Capacity scales without provisioning
Fully managed by AWS

Good fit for

→Sharing files between several EC2 instances

Tags: file-storage; nfs; aws; shared-storage; managed-service; cloud

Amazon EFS: questions and answers

What is Amazon EFS used for?: Amazon EFS is a fully managed, elastic NFS file system from AWS that provides shared file storage to AWS compute instances. It is a good fit for sharing files between several EC2 instances.
How much does Amazon EFS cost?: Amazon EFS is a paid product with no free plan. A free trial is available.
Is Amazon EFS open source?: No. Amazon EFS is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Amazon EFS include SeaweedFS, Ceph and JuiceFS.
What are some alternatives to Amazon EFS?: Amazon EFS competes with Azure Files, Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Amazon EFS alternatives.