Nine is fine: Amazon EFS sessions at re:Invent 2021

At re:Invent 2021 you’ll enjoy learning, sharing, networking, and fun. The 2021 in-person event is sold out, but not to worry! You can still register for virtual re:Invent. AWS Storage has a big lineup for you this year, starting with our leadership session, “Driving innovation and insight with cloud data on AWS storage,” where you’ll learn what’s new in the storage world.

In this blog, I share information to help you get the most out of our Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) re:Invent sessions. Whether you’re a developer, a cloud architect, an app or storage administrator, or a file enthusiast of any type, we have sessions for everyone. But first, if you’re new to Amazon EFS, here’s a brief primer.

What is Amazon EFS?

Amazon EFS provides a simple, serverless, set-and-forget, elastic file system that lets you share file data without provisioning or managing storage. It can be used with AWS cloud services and on-premises resources, and is built to scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications. Amazon EFS is for file-based workloads that help you simplify DevOps, modernize application development, enhance content management systems, and accelerate data science and much more. Amazon EFS is elastic and cost-optimized. You pay only for the resources you use, and there’s no minimum fee, and no set up charges, with an effective storage cost as low as $0.043/GB-month*

Nine Amazon EFS sessions at re:Invent 2021 you don’t want to miss

I recommend you start with “AWS Storage solutions for Containers and Serverless applications,” (STG205) for modernizing your applications using Amazon EFS and Amazon S3 with AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), and AWS Fargate. Dig deeper into Amazon EFS in the breakout session “Deep dive on Amazon EFS,” as well as sessions that look closely at Amazon EFS data protection and performance.

In the section that follows, you’ll find Amazon EFS re:Invent session descriptions. Additionally, find them on the re:Invent page under ‘Agenda.’ Most breakout sessions will be available for on-demand viewing during Virtual re:Invent 2021, while others will be available for on-demand viewing following the live in-person re:Invent.

Breakout sessions

AWS re:Invent breakout sessions are lecture-style and one hour long. These sessions take place across the re:Invent campus and cover all topics at all levels (200–400). Sessions are delivered by AWS experts, customers, and partners, and they typically include 10–15 minutes at the end for Q&A.

STG205 | AWS storage solutions for containers and serverless applications | Breakout

STG205-R2 NOV 30, 2021 | 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Location: Level 4, Lando 4202., Venetian

STG205-R1 DEC 1, 2021 | 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Level 5, Palazzo A, Venetian

Modern applications have revolutionized application architecture by using containers for greater portability and/or building applications on serverless infrastructure to optimize compute resources. In this session, look at different storage services, such as Amazon EFS and Amazon S3 to help you determine which storage is the best fit for your modern applications.

STG343 | Amazon EFS data protection best practices | Breakout

DEC 1, 2021 | 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Location: Level 4, Delfino 4002, Venetian

Amazon EFS is designed for 99.999999999% (11 9s) durability, is highly available, and is natively integrated with AWS Backup, so your data is available whenever it’s needed. Amazon EFS objects (directory, file, and link) are redundantly stored across multiple Availability Zones (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. In this session, learn best practices for protecting your data on Amazon EFS.

STG303 | Deep dive on Amazon EFS | Breakout

DEC 2, 2021 | 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: Level 4, Delfino 4104, Venetian
Overflow: Level 1, Latour 2, Content Hub, Red Screen, Wynn

In this session, learn about Amazon EFS serverless storage, enabling you to share file data with no provisioning or management required. Learn how to select applications and workloads that can benefit from Amazon EFS’s massive scale, features, and benefits. Leave this session with important details about security, scale, performance, management, storage classes, and data lifecycle management.

STG348 | Introducing the latest Amazon EFS performance optimizations | Breakout

NOV 30, 2021 | 5:45 PM – 6:45 PM
Location: Level 5, Palazzo B, Venetian

Today’s file-based applications require ever more scale and performance. To meet these demands, Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) continuously delivers incremental performance improvements to our customers. In this session, you’ll learn how recent performance improvements enable you to broaden your use of Amazon EFS. Performance improvements can help you further optimize latency-sensitive workloads such as DevOps, machine learning, data science, content management, and home directories.

Chalk Talks

Chalk talks are a highly interactive content format with a small audience. Each begins with a short lecture (10–15 minutes) delivered by an AWS expert, followed by a 45- or 50-minute Q&A session with the audience.

STG403 | Amazon EFS performance best practices | Chalk Talk

DEC 2, 2021 | 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: Level 1, Forum 110, Caesars Forum

Networked file systems, including Amazon EFS, have distinct performance characteristics that are different from local file systems. In this chalk talk, learn network file system (NFS) performance tuning basics. Hear best practices for client configurations and learn about caching, multi-threading, and directory structures. Additionally, hear tips and tricks for how to get optimal performance out of your Amazon EFS file system.

STG325 | Building serverless modern applications using Amazon S3 or Amazon EFS | Chalk Talk

DEC 1, 2021 | 9:15 AM – 10:15 AM
Location: Level 1, Forum 115, Caesars Forum

Serverless technology allows you to build modern applications with increased agility and lower total cost of ownership. This allows you to focus on product innovation and shorten your time to market without worrying about provisioning, maintaining, and scaling servers for backend components, such as storage. In this chalk talk, learn how you can start innovating with serverless technology from Amazon S3 and Amazon EFS.

STG326 | Persistent file storage for containerized CMS platforms on Kubernetes | Chalk Talk

DEC 3, 2021 | 9:15 AM – 10:15 AM
Location: Level 1, Forum 115, Caesars Forum

About 40 percent of the internet currently runs on WordPress, and over half of all websites run on a content management system (CMS). More and more organizations are modernizing their applications to run on microservices and containers. A common challenge is building persistent websites on containers, which are traditionally a stateless design. Amazon EFS provides a highly available and durable managed file-system solution that, when combined with Amazon EKS, allows you to deploy stateful, containerized workloads at scale for CMS websites. This chalk talk demonstrates how to design, deploy, and manage a full-stack WordPress deployment on Kubernetes with Amazon EFS.

Builders’ and Workshop sessions

Builders’ sessions are 60-minute small group sessions with up to six attendees per table, and one AWS expert, who is there to answer questions and provide guidance. Workshops are two-hour hands-on sessions where you work in teams to solve problems using AWS services.

STG401 | Get the most out of your Amazon EFS deployments | Builders’

NOV 30, 2021 | 7:15 PM – 8:15 PM
Location: Level 1, Marco Polo 704, Venetian

Amazon EFS is a simple, serverless, set-and-forget elastic file system that brings highly available, highly durable file storage to a wide variety of applications. In this builders’ session, AWS experts share best practices for optimizing performance when accessing data from your Amazon EFS file system. Dive deep into the performance modes within Amazon EFS, and learn how to design your workload to get the most from your file system.

STG309 | Integrating serverless applications with AWS storage services | Workshop

DEC 1, 2021 | 6:15 PM – 8:30 PM
Location: Level 1, Mouton 1, Wynn

AWS Lambda is a serverless compute service that lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. In this workshop, gain hands-on experience integrating AWS Lambda with Amazon S3 and Amazon EFS.

Conclusion

re:Invent 2021 is the place to get connected, expand your knowledge, and access AWS experts. From AWS keynotes to helping build global community, there is something for everyone. Don’t forget to take a break and play at Midnight Madness (an AWS-style pep rally to kick off your week at re:Invent), and have a blast at the coolest party in tech, our 10th annual re:Play party.

Your health and safety are our top priority. Get information about staying healthy and safe at re:Invent.

Our Amazon re:Invent session speakers look forward to sharing their knowledge, experience, and best practices with you. Get ready to modernize application development, and simplify your file-based workloads with Amazon EFS, a simple, serverless, set-and-forget, elastic file system. Thanks for reading, and see you at re:Invent.

*pricing in US East (N. Virginia) region, assumes 80% of your storage in EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access (EFS One Zone-IA)