Question #923
A company is deploying a distributed machine learning training cluster on AWS using Linux EC2 instances spanning multiple Availability Zones. All nodes require shared file storage that supports POSIX compliance, high availability, resilience, and high throughput for large-scale data processing. Which storage solution meets these requirements?
Configure an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway with stored volumes backed by Amazon S3. Mount the stored volumes on each EC2 instance in the cluster.
Create an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system using the General Purpose performance mode. Mount the EFS file system on all EC2 instances in the cluster.
Provision an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume with the gp3 volume type. Attach the EBS volume to all EC2 instances in the cluster simultaneously.
Deploy an Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file system using the Max I/O performance mode. Mount the EFS file system on each EC2 instance in the cluster.
Explanation
The correct answer is D. Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) is a managed NFS file system that is POSIX-compliant, supports multi-AZ deployments (ensuring high availability and resilience), and allows concurrent access by thousands of EC2 instances. The Max I/O performance mode is optimized for large-scale, parallelized workloads (e.g., machine learning training), offering higher throughput and lower latency for data-intensive operations.
Option A is incorrect because AWS Storage Gateway's volume gateway is designed for hybrid storage, not native AWS shared file access, and lacks POSIX compliance. Option B's General Purpose performance mode is unsuitable for high-throughput workloads. Option C is invalid because EBS volumes cannot be attached to multiple instances simultaneously across AZs without complex configurations, and EBS is block storage, not a shared file system.
Answer
The correct answer is: D