AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (SAA-C03)Design High-Performing ArchitecturesHard
A company is redesigning its monolithic application into microservices using Amazon ECS. Several microservices require shared, low-latency block storage that can be accessed by multiple containers running on different EC2 instances within the same Availability Zone. The storage needs to be highly available and persistent. Which AWS storage solution is appropriate for this requirement?
- AAmazon EFS.
- BAmazon S3 Standard.
- CAmazon EBS volume shared among multiple EC2 instances.
- DAmazon FSx for Windows File Server.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Amazon EFS.
Amazon EFS is a scalable, elastic, shared file system designed for Linux-based workloads, making it ideal for microservices deployed on ECS that require shared access to file storage from multiple containers across different EC2 instances within the same region or AZ. It provides high availability and persistence.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Amazon S3 is object storage, not block storage, and is not designed for shared file system access by EC2 instances/containers.
- C. Amazon EBS volumes are block storage attached to a single EC2 instance at a time (though Multi-Attach exists for specific use cases, it's not a general shared file system solution for containers).
- D. Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is designed for Windows-based workloads, not typically for Linux-based microservices running on ECS, and EFS is generally preferred for this use case.
Amazon EFS
Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) provides a simple, scalable, elastic, shared file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources, designed for Linux workloads.
- Shared file system, accessible by multiple instances/containers.
- Elastic, scales automatically up/down.
- Highly available and durable.
- Supports NFSv4 protocol.
- Ideal for containerized applications, web serving, content management.
Memory trick: EFS is like a shared drive for all your containers, always there and growing with them.