Case Study: Transforming Shared Storage with Amazon EFS for Enhanced Scalability and Efficiency
Client: A Digital Services Company
Industry Vertical: Technology & Digital Labs
Country of Work: India
The Challenge
The client was using traditional Amazon EBS-backed storage and was struggling with the challenges of shared data management. They faced three core issues: limited scalability for large workloads, operational complexity in managing shared data access across multiple instances, and increased costs due to over-provisioning required to meet peak capacity. They needed a solution for highly available, scalable, shared file storage that also optimized costs.
The Solution: Implementing Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
We migrated the client’s shared file storage workload to Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), a fully managed file system service.
The implementation steps included:
- Architecture Design: Designing an EFS architecture with the appropriate Bursting Throughput mode to balance cost and performance.
- Cost Optimization: Configuring EFS lifecycle policies to automatically move infrequently accessed data to a lower-cost storage tier.
- Deployment: Successfully mounting the EFS file system on both Amazon EC2 instances and Kubernetes pods, ensuring secure, multi-access functionality.
- Security: Configuring AWS IAM roles and security groups for secure, fine-grained access control.
Key Technology Stack
| Category | Services/Tools Used |
| File Storage | Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) |
| Compute & Orchestration | AWS EKS, EC2, Kubernetes |
| Security & Networking | AWS IAM, VPC, ALB, Nginx Ingress Controller |
| DevOps & Monitoring | Bitbucket, CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana |
Results & Success Metrics
The switch to EFS provided a single, elastic storage solution that simplified operations and delivered immediate cost savings.
| Metric | Outcome |
| Scalability & Availability | Achieved scalable and highly available shared storage across all compute resources. |
| Cost Optimization | Reduced costs by leveraging EFS lifecycle policies to automate tiering. |
| Operational Efficiency | Simplified shared data management, eliminating the complexity and cost of over-provisioning. |
| Performance | Improved overall storage performance consistency for applications requiring shared access. |
Lessons Learned
- Thoroughly assessing data access patterns is vital to choose the optimal EFS performance mode and lifecycle policies for maximum cost savings.
- A fully managed file system like EFS offers significant operational efficiencies compared to self-managed or traditional block storage for shared access.
