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Amazon EFS

Amazon EFS Infrequent Access

Save up to 91% on file storage

Maximizing operational efficiency and reducing total cost of ownership are common drivers for moving business applications to the cloud. (EFS One Zone) Amazon EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (EFS Standard-IA) and Amazon EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access (EFS One Zone-IA) are storage classes that provide price/performance that is cost-optimized for files not accessed every day, with storage prices up to 91% lower compared to Amazon EFS Standard (EFS Standard) and Amazon EFS One Zone (EFS One Zone) respectively.

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides a simple, serverless, set-and-forget elastic file system for use with Amazon Web Services Cloud services and on-premises resources. Amazon EFS Standard-Infrequent Access (EFS Standard-IA) and Amazon EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access (EFS One Zone-IA) are storage classes that provide price/performance that is cost-optimized for files not accessed every day, with storage prices up to 91% lower compared to Amazon EFS Standard (EFS Standard) and Amazon EFS One Zone respectively. The EFS One Zone-IA storage class costs only ¥0.107/GB-month*, and EFS Standard-IA costs only ¥0.2/GB-month**.

Using the industry accepted estimate that 20% of data is actively used and 80% is infrequently accessed, you can store your files on Amazon EFS at an effective price of ¥0.3136/GB-month (20% * ¥1.14/GB-month for files stored on EFS One Zone + 80% * ¥0.107/GB-month for files stored on EFS One Zone-IA = ¥0.3136/GB-month)*, or an effective price of ¥0.589/GB-month (20% * ¥2.145/GB-month for files stored on regional EFS Standard + 80% * ¥0.2/GB-month for files stored on EFS Standard-IA = ¥0.589/GB-month)**.

To get started with Infrequent Access storage classes, simply enable Amazon EFS Lifecycle Management for your file system by selecting a lifecycle policy that matches your needs. Amazon EFS will automatically and transparently move your files to lower cost regional EFS Standard-IA storage class or EFS One Zone-IA storage class based on the last time they were accessed. Amazon EFS transparently serves files from both frequent access storage classes (such as EFS Standard and EFS One Zone) and infrequent access storage classes (such as EFS Standard-IA and EFS One Zone-IA) from a common file system namespace when the lifecycle policy to move files to these storage classes is set. You don't have to worry about which of your files are actively used and which are infrequently accessed. Amazon EFS Intelligent-Tiering offers an additional lifecycle policy that moves files back to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone automatically.

Amazon EFS Intelligent-Tiering

EFS Intelligent-Tiering delivers automatic cost savings for workloads with changing access patterns by placing your file data in the appropriate storage class, at the right time, based on file access patterns.

EFS Intelligent-Tiering uses Lifecycle Management to monitor the access patterns of your workload and automaticallytransitions  files that are not accessed for the duration of the Lifecycle policy (e.g., 30 days) from either the EFS Standard or EFS One Zone storage classes, to their corresponding Infrequent Access (IA) storage class (EFS Standard-Infrequent Access or EFS One Zone-Infrequent Access). If access patterns change and that data is read from or written to again, Lifecycle Management automatically moves the files back to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone, eliminating the risk of unbounded access charges.

To use EFS Intelligent-Tiering, simply set two lifecycle policies: one to automatically move files to EFS Standard-IA or EFS One Zone-IA and another policy to automatically move files back to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone if accessed.

*pricing in Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD, assumes 80% of your storage in EFS One Zone-IA
**pricing in Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) region, operated by NWCD, assumes 80% of your storage in EFS Standard-IA

How it works

1

Create file system

2

Choose Lifecycle Management file access policy to transition files to infrequent access (7, 14, 30, 60, or 90 days) using the CLI, API, or Amazon EFS Management Console.

3

Files not accessed according to the Lifecycle policy are moved to the EFS Standard-IA or EFS One Zone-IA storage class, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes.

4

Additionally, choose the Lifecycle Management file access policy to transition files to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone if accessed (‘On First Access’) using the CLI, API, or Amazon EFS Management Console.

5

Files that are read from or written to the IA storage classes (EFS Standard-IA or EFS One Zone-IA) are moved to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes.

Diagram illustrating the lifecycle management process for Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), including steps such as creating the file system, setting lifecycle policies, EFS lifecycle management, infrequent access storage, and data access with intelligent tiering.

Use Cases for Infrequent Access Storage Classes

Backup & Recovery

EFS Standard-IA and EFS One Zone-IA storage classes cost-effectively store file data, with industry-leading availability, security and durability enabling you to meet regulatory retention and compliance needs so your backups are protected and available  if needed.

Analytics

Managing massive volumes of big data analytics can be costly and complex for workloads like genomics and geospatial applications. EFS Standard-IA and EFS One Zone-IA storage classes cost-effectively store large amounts of data while providing the same throughput used to scale applications with files stored in EFS Standard and EFS One Zone storage classes. If an analytics job is accessed later, EFS Intelligent-Tiering can automatically move this data to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone storage classes, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes.

Document Management

Many reporting systems for business applications rely on accessible shared file storage in support of business functions. With EFS Standard-IA and EFS One Zone-IA storage classes, you can easily and cost-effectively store and access files from shared file systems, eliminating the need to manage data to control costs. If reports are accessed later, EFS Intelligent-Tiering can automatically move accessed reports to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone storage classes, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes

Media Assets & Content Management

Web serving applications and content management systems store and serve media assets for websites, online publications, and archives. These assets become infrequently accessed after a period of time as content ages and you can easily store these infrequently accessed files in lower cost storage like EFS Standard-IA and EFS One Zone-IA storage classes. If any of this content becomes active and is accessed once again, EFS Intelligent-Tiering can automatically move the accessed content to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes.

Data Science & Machine Learning

Data Science workloads rely on shared file storage to store machine learning training data and inference models. As this data ages you can cost-effectively store it in EFS Standard-IA or EFS One Zone-IA storage classes. If datasets become active once again, EFS Intelligent-Tiering will automatically move this data to EFS Standard or EFS One Zone, depending on whether your file system uses Standard or One Zone storage classes.