2.1 — Peer the Lightsail and default VPCs using the Lightsail peer-vpc command. Use jq to extract <Lightsail VPC ID> and <Default VPC ID> for later use.

Note: I use <Identifier> notation throughout this guide to indicate the results returned by the jq command.

Note: You can complete this guide without the use of jq but will need to extract the requried information from the JSON returned by AWS CLI commands yourself.

3.1 —Create a new file system with the create-file-system command. 

3.2 —Use jq to extract the  for later use.

This command creates a new general purpose file system with bursting throughput mode. Additional options are available if you want to use a difference file system performance model, encryption strategy, or throughput mode. For more information see the EFS documentation.

4.1 —Obtain subnet information for the default VPC using the describe-subnets command. Provide the <Default VPC ID> obtained previously. Use jq to extract the <subnet X ID>s for later use.

4.2 —Create an EFS mount target in each of the default subnets using the create-mount-target command. Use jq to extract the <EFS Mount Point IP Address> for later use.

Do this for each <Subnet ID> obtained in the previous section.

Note: If you don't have Lightsail instances in some AZs, you don't need to create a mount targets in those AZs.

5.1 — Identify the VPC CIDR block for the Lightsail VPC using the describe-vpc-peering-connections command. Use jq to extract the <Lightsail VPC CIDR> block for later use.

5.2 —Identify the default security group for the default VPC using the describe-security-groups command. Use jq to extract the <Default Security Group ID> for later use.

5.3 — Create the security group rule with the authorize-security-group-ingress command.

This rule allows TCP traffic from the Lightsail VPC on port 2049 (the default NFS port).

6.1 —Install the NFS client and mount the EFS file system. These commands must be executed using sudo. 

Replace <EFS Mount Point IP Address> with the IP address obtained in the previous step for the AZ your Lightsail instance is located in.

6.2 —Write a file to the shared file system.

6.3 — Repeat step 1 for a different Linux based Lightsail instance in the same region. Be sure to use the EFS mount point for the AZ the different instance is in. Verify you can read the file written by the first Lightsail instance.

Congratulations. You have successfully connected your Lightsail instances to a shared EFS file system.

7.1 — Remove the security group rule using the revoke-security-group-ingress command.

7.2 — Unpeer the Lightsail and default VPCs using the unpeer-vpc command.

7.3 — Remove the mount targets for the EFS file system by first using the describe-mount-targets command to get the mount target IDs.

Use the delete-mount-target command to delete the individual mount targets.

7.4 —Delete the EFS file system using the delete-file-system.