Question #1585
A company operates several Amazon EC2 Linux instances distributed across two Availability Zones within a VPC. The applications on these instances require frequent, low-latency access to a shared storage system that manages a large number of small files concurrently. The storage solution must support simultaneous read and write operations from multiple instances.
What should a solutions architect recommend to fulfill these requirements?
Configure an Amazon S3 bucket with a bucket policy allowing access from all EC2 instances in the VPC.
Deploy an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system and mount it across all EC2 instances.
Provision a Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) Amazon EBS volume and attach it to all EC2 instances simultaneously.
Attach individual Amazon EBS volumes to each EC2 instance and implement a synchronization mechanism to keep data consistent across instances.
Explanation
The correct answer is B. Amazon EFS provides a scalable, fully managed file system that supports concurrent read/write operations from multiple EC2 instances across Availability Zones. It is optimized for low-latency access and handles large volumes of small files efficiently.
- Option A (S3) is incorrect because S3 is object storage with higher latency and lacks file system semantics required for concurrent read/write operations.
- Option C (EBS io2) is incorrect because EBS volumes cannot be attached to multiple instances simultaneously without a clustered file system.
- Option D (EBS with sync) is impractical due to synchronization complexity and potential data inconsistency.
Key Points:
1. EFS supports multi-AZ redundancy and POSIX-compliant file access.
2. EBS is limited to single-instance attachment unless using specialized configurations.
3. S3 is unsuitable for low-latency, file-based workloads.
Answer
The correct answer is: B