Amazon S3 vs EFS vs EBS — Choosing the Right AWS Storage Service

When working in AWS, storage isn’t just about saving data — it’s about choosing the right type of storage for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.

AWS offers multiple storage services, but three of the most widely used are:

• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

• Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

• Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

Each has unique strengths and use cases. Let’s break them down.

---

1. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)

📌 Type: Object storage
📌 Best For: Storing large amounts of unstructured data, backups, logs, media files.
📌 Access: Accessible over the internet via HTTP/HTTPS API.

Key Features:

• Highly scalable — stores unlimited data.

• 99.999999999% (11 9’s) durability.

• Pay only for storage used.

• Supports different storage classes (Standard, Infrequent Access, Glacier).

Common Use Cases:

• Hosting static websites.

• Data backup and archival.

• Big data analytics storage.

• Serving images/videos.

---

2. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System)

📌 Type: Managed NFS (Network File System)
📌 Best For: Shared file storage between multiple EC2 instances.
📌 Access: Mounted via NFS protocol across multiple Availability Zones.

Key Features:

• Fully managed — no need to manage file servers.

• Scales automatically as files are added/removed.

• Can be accessed by multiple EC2 instances simultaneously.

• Ideal for Linux workloads.

Common Use Cases:

• Shared application data.

• Content management systems.

• Developer environments where multiple servers access the same files.

---

3. Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store)

📌 Type: Block storage (like a virtual hard drive)
📌 Best For: Attaching to a single EC2 instance for databases, OS, or applications.
📌 Access: Mounted to one EC2 instance at a time (can be detached and reattached).

Key Features:

• Low latency and high performance.

• Persistent storage for EC2 even after stop/restart.

• Snapshots for backup and recovery.

• SSD and HDD options.

Common Use Cases:

• Storing application data and databases.

• Hosting operating system volumes.

• High-performance workloads.

---

Comparison Table

---

Choosing the Right Storage

✅ Choose S3 if you need internet-accessible, scalable, and cost-effective object storage.
✅ Choose EFS if you need shared file storage between multiple EC2 instances.
✅ Choose EBS if you need high-performance block storage for a single EC2 instance.

---

---