AWS Storage Blog

Easy-to-use Amazon EFS integrations with AWS Compute services

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Every day AWS customers launch Amazon EC2 instances using the Launch Instance Wizard (LIW). When launching instances to host applications like content management systems, data science notebooks, database backups, media workflows, and code repositories, you create and attach shared file systems like Amazon EFS to your instances. In the past, creating and attaching new Amazon EFS file systems to the instances you launch required multiple steps across the consoles of the two services. At AWS, we recognize that this process was potentially cumbersome. We know that when you launch instances to host an application on AWS Cloud infrastructure, you require an integrated experience across compute, storage, and network, regardless of the AWS compute model you’ve selected.

Today, we are dramatically simplifying this commonly used workflow, by allowing you to do it all within the Amazon EC2 LIW. We are pleased to announce new Amazon EC2 LIW support for quickly creating new Amazon EFS file systems with recommended settings. Without leaving the Amazon EC2 console, you can create your new Amazon EFS file system, and then immediately add it to the Amazon EC2 instance you are launching. Your newly created Amazon EFS file system is automatically mounted on the instance when it launches. The new integration automatically creates and attaches the required security groups for your instance and mount targets of your file system.

In this blog, we walk you through using the new Amazon EFS integration with the Amazon EC2 LIW. Plus, we share information and links to additional Amazon EFS integrations we’ve launched with AWS compute services in 2020, including integrations with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), AWS Fargate, and AWS Lambda.

Amazon EFS integration with Amazon EC2

We demonstrate the ease of integrating Amazon EFS with the Amazon EC2 LIW by walking you through a few EC2 console screenshots. Launching a new Amazon EC2 instance using the LIW consists of seven steps. In step one, you choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), in step two, you choose an instance type, and then in step three, you configure instance details.

The following screenshot depicts step three (configure instance details) of the Amazon EC2 LIW. You can now easily create a new Amazon EFS file system by simply selecting Create new file system in the File systems section. The console then greets you with an Amazon EFS Quick Create widget that enables you to provide a name for the file system you are creating. Providing a name is optional, yet recommended, as it helps you to easily find your file system later in the Amazon EFS console. To complete your file system creation with the service recommended settings, choose the Create button on the widget.

Step three (configure instance details) of the EC2 LIW, with box and arrow.

That does it – you’ve created a new Amazon EFS file system from the Amazon EC2 LIW.

Next, you can immediately add your newly created Amazon EFS file system to the Amazon EC2 instance you are launching by clicking on the Add file system to instance button. When your instance is launched it has immediate access to your file system, with the required security groups automatically created and attached for you.

To complete your file system creation with the service recommended settings, choose the Create button on the widget.

At this point, you have successfully created a new Amazon EFS file system, and have added it to the Amazon EC2 instance you are launching. You can proceed with any remaining configuration steps for your instance, and launch it when you’re ready by choosing Review and Launch.

At this point, you have successfully created a new Amazon EFS file system and added it to the EC2 instance you are launching.

The new integration of Amazon EFS and Amazon EC2 automatically mounts the new file system to the instance when you launch it.

Amazon EFS integration with AWS Compute services for containers and serverless

Amazon EFS not only provides massively parallel access to thousands of EC2 instances, it is also integrated with AWS Compute services for deploying applications with containers and serverless. As more applications are modernized with containers and serverless, many require data to persist. Containers are ephemeral, dynamically scaling in and out, with their saved state or data cleared on exit. Examples include long-running containerized applications, stateful microservices, and containerized applications that must persist state for high availability.

Conclusion

Amazon EFS is a simple, scalable, fully managed, highly durable, and available shared file system that you can use for your AWS Compute needs. Amazon EFS is performant, cost-optimized, and addresses a wide range of workloads. Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, Amazon EKS, and AWS Lambda share these same attributes. This alignment means that you don’t need to design for these already-incorporated traits.

With the new Amazon EFS file system integration with the Amazon EC2 LIW, you can fire up your Amazon EFS file systems and EC2 instances simultaneously, saving you time navigating consoles and configuring settings. We have natively integrated with all AWS cloud-computing models, making it easier for you to move your workloads to the AWS Cloud, and to modernize your applications. Not only should this save you time, but it should also make it easier for you to build and scale your applications.

Join us on November 10, 2020, for the AWS Storage Day virtual event, and learn what is new across the AWS Storage portfolio.