AWS, Cloud Computing

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Introduction to AMAZON ELASTIC FILE SYSTEM: Step by Step AEFS Replication Guide

TABLE OF CONTENT

1. Introduction
2. Amazon EFS Storage Classes
3. Amazon EFS Replication
4. Creating Amazon Elastic File System
5. Creating Replication for Amazon EFS
6. Conclusion
7. About CloudThat
8. FAQs

1. Introduction to Amazon Elastic File System

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides a simple, serverless, set-and-forget elastic file system with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. Amazon EFS features a simple web services interface that allows you to establish and configure file systems rapidly and easily. You don’t have to worry about installing, patching, or maintaining intricate file system configurations because the service takes care of everything.

2. Amazon EFS Storage Classes

Amazon EFS offers four storage classes, and they work in pairs. The EFS One Zone and One Zone-IA storage classes are intended to provide data in a single Availability Zone with continuous availability. Since Amazon EFS stores data in a single AWS Availability Zone, data stored in these storage classes may be lost if a disaster affects all copies of the data within the Availability Zone or the Availability Zone is destroyed. The EFS Standard and Standard-IA storage classes are regional storage classes that are designed to ensure data availability even if one or more Availability Zones in an AWS Region are unavailable. They provide the highest availability and durability by redundantly storing file system data and metadata across multiple geographically separated Availability Zones within a Region.

3. Amazon EFS Replication

Amazon EFS replication can be used to create a replica of your Amazon EFS file system in your preferred AWS Region. When you enable EFS file system replication, it automatically and transparently copies the data and metadata from the source file system to a new destination EFS file system. In addition, it uses a replication configuration to manage the process of creating the destination file system and maintaining it in sync with the source file system.

Amazon EFS automatically maintains synchronization between the source and destination file systems. In addition, Amazon EFS replication is continuous, with a recovery point objective (RPO) of minutes and a recovery time objective (RTO) of minutes. These capabilities should help you achieve your compliance and business continuity objectives.

Learn more about RTO and RPO in this blog.

4. Creating Amazon Elastic File System

Step 1: Sign in to the AWS console and search for EFS in the search bar and select the service
Amazon EFS

Step 2: Click on Create File system button
Amazon EFS

Step 3: Provide the EFS details as below:

Step 4: Once EFS is created, the successful creation of the EFS message is popped up on the top. Select the file which is created to see the more details
Amazon EFS

5. Creating Replication for Amazon EFS

Step 5: To create replication for EFS, click on create replication
Amazon EFS

Step 6: Provide the replication details as below:

Step 7: Once the replication is created, you can view the successful creation of the replication message for EFS as shown below:
Amazon EFS

Note: The replicated file is read-only in the destination region.

Step 8: To monitor the EFS replication activity, go to the CloudWatch service
Amazon EFS

Step 9: A new CloudWatch metric, TimeSinceLastSync is generated when the replica is created as shown below:
Amazon EFS

6. Conclusion

The new replication feature is now available in Amazon EFS. The replication for EFS is helpful to maintain backup data in different regions. Amazon EFS replica saves up to 75% in disaster recovery storage costs. It is also beneficial to meet business continuity goals and compliance. Amazon EFS is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9’s) of durability and high availability. You can use Amazon EFS Replication to automatically maintain a copy of your Amazon EFS file system in a Region or AZ of your choice, using the Amazon EFS console, AWS CLI, and APIs to enable replication on an existing file system.

7. About CloudThat

As a pioneer in the Cloud consulting realm, CloudThat is AWS (Amazon Web Services) Advanced Consulting Partner, AWS authorized Training Partner, Microsoft Gold Partner, and Winner of the Microsoft Asia Superstar Campaign for India: 2021. Our team has designed and delivered various Disaster Recovery strategies to our customers.

We are on a mission to build a robust cloud computing ecosystem by disseminating knowledge on technological intricacies within the cloud space. Our blogs, webinars, case studies, and white papers enable all the stakeholders in the cloud computing sphere to advance in their businesses.

To get started, go through our Expert Advisory page and Managed Services Package that is CloudThat’s offerings. Then, you can quickly get in touch with our highly accomplished team of experts to carry out your migration needs.

8. FAQs

  1. How do I manage a file system?

Amazon EFS is a fully managed service. The file storage infrastructure is already managed for you. When you use Amazon EFS, you avoid the complexity of deploying and maintaining complex file system infrastructure. An Amazon EFS file system grows and shrinks automatically as you add and remove files, so you don’t need to manage storage procurement or provisioning.

You can administer a file system through the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon EFS API (and various language-specific SDKs). The console, API, and SDK can create and delete file systems, configure how file systems are accessed, create and edit file system tags, enable features such as Provisioned Throughput and Lifecycle Management, and display detailed information about file systems.

  1. How is Amazon EFS designed to provide high durability and availability?

By default, every EFS file system object (such as directory, file, and link) is redundantly stored across multiple AZs for file systems using Standard storage classes. If you select Amazon EFS One Zone storage classes, your data is redundantly stored within a single AZ. Amazon EFS is designed to sustain concurrent device failures by quickly detecting and repairing any lost redundancy. In addition, using Standard storage classes, a file system can be accessed concurrently from all AZs in the Region where it is located. You can architect your application to failover from one AZ to other AZs in the Region to ensure the highest application availability. Mount targets are highly available within an AZ for all EFS storage classes. For more information on availability.

  1. How does EFS Replication work?

When you enable EFS Replication on a file system, Amazon EFS automatically creates a new file system in the destination region and begins copying your data. Once the initial copy is completed, EFS Replication copies change incrementally to deliver an RPO of minutes for most file systems. EFS Replication preserves all metadata, such as owners and permissions, when copying changes to files and folders. While EFS Replication is enabled, your destination file system is in read-only mode and can be updated only by EFS Replication. If your source file system is unavailable, you can failover to the destination file system by deleting Replication. Deleting the Replication makes the destination file system writeable for your applications.

WRITTEN BY Suresh Kumar Reddy

Yerraballi Suresh Kumar Reddy is working as a Research Associate - Data and AI/ML at CloudThat. He is a self-motivated and hard-working Cloud Data Science aspirant who is adept at using analytical tools for analyzing and extracting meaningful insights from data.

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Comments

  1. Vineet Negi

    Apr 19, 2022

    Reply

    Very informative and great content.

  2. Sumedh Patil

    Apr 18, 2022

    Reply

    Informative content shared keep posting such things great 👏👍

  3. Click to Comment

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