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Difficulty: Very hardAWS Storage Services

A healthcare organization is migrating an imaging application to AWS. The application requires a shared storage solution that can be mounted concurrently by hundreds of Amazon EC2 instances distributed across multiple Availability Zones. The files must be accessible via standard file system protocols (POSIX-compliant), and the storage capacity must scale automatically as images are uploaded. To minimize costs, any images not accessed for 30 days must be transitioned to a lower-cost tier, but they must still be available for immediate, millisecond-range retrieval when requested by a clinician. Which storage solution should the organization implement?

  1. A
    Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Standard with an S3 Lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval.
  2. Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with EFS Lifecycle Management configured to transition files to the Infrequent Access (IA) storage class.Answer
  3. C
    Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) with Multi-Attach enabled, relying on AWS to automatically manage the cluster file-locking and concurrent write operations.
  4. D
    Amazon EBS Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2) volumes configured with Amazon EBS Elastic Volumes to automatically scale storage capacity downward when files are deleted.

Answer

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) with EFS Lifecycle Management configured to transition files to the Infrequent Access (IA) storage class.
Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) provides serverless, fully elastic file storage that supports the POSIX standard and can be mounted concurrently by hundreds of EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones. EFS Lifecycle Management automatically transitions files that have not been accessed for 30 days to EFS Infrequent Access (IA), which reduces storage costs while still delivering millisecond-range retrieval latencies.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary storage architecture requirement (block, file, or object storage).
The application requires a POSIX-compliant shared file system that can be mounted concurrently by hundreds of EC2 instances across multiple Availability Zones.
This rules out Amazon S3, which is an object store rather than a file system, and limits the choice to file-based solutions.
2
Evaluate the Multi-Availability Zone (AZ) and scalability constraints.
The solution must support concurrent access across multiple AZs and scale storage capacity automatically as files are added or deleted.
Amazon EFS naturally supports concurrent mounting across multiple AZs and is fully elastic, whereas Amazon EBS volumes are localized to a single AZ (even with Multi-Attach) and do not dynamically scale down.
3
Analyze cost optimization and retrieval latency requirements.
Files inactive for 30 days must transition to a lower-cost tier while maintaining millisecond-range retrieval latencies.
EFS Lifecycle Management transitions inactive files to EFS IA (Infrequent Access), which reduces storage costs while still delivering millisecond retrieval times, unlike cold archival tiers that require minutes or hours to retrieve data.

Key Concept

Amazon EFS is a serverless, fully elastic, POSIX-compliant file system designed for shared access across multiple Availability Zones, featuring lifecycle management to optimize costs while keeping data immediately accessible.
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AWS Storage Services

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