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Difficulty: MediumHigh-Performing and Scalable Storage Solutions

A company is deploying a media-processing web application on a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones. The application requires a shared file system to store and process uploaded media files. The storage solution must support concurrent read and write operations from all EC2 instances, scale throughput dynamically to handle unpredictable spikes of up to 2 GB/s2\text{ GB/s}, and maintain low, consistent latency. Which storage solution should a solutions architect recommend to meet these requirements with the lowest operational overhead?

  1. Create an Amazon EFS file system configured with Elastic throughput mode, and mount it on each EC2 instance.Answer
  2. B
    Create an Amazon EBS gp3 volume with Multi-Attach enabled, and attach it to all EC2 instances concurrently.
  3. C
    Create an Amazon EBS io2 Block Express volume with Multi-Attach enabled, and attach it to all EC2 instances across the three Availability Zones.
  4. D
    Configure a central EC2 instance with an Amazon EBS gp3 volume, set up a Network File System (NFS) server, and export the file system to all other EC2 instances.

Answer

Create an Amazon EFS file system configured with Elastic throughput mode, and mount it on each EC2 instance.
The correct option (creating an Amazon EFS file system with Elastic throughput) is correct because Amazon EFS natively supports multi-AZ concurrent access and automatically scales throughput dynamically up to several gigabytes per second to match application demands, minimizing administrative overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the sharing and distribution requirements of the workload.
The file system must be accessed concurrently by EC2 instances distributed across three Availability Zones.
This requirement rules out standard Amazon EBS volumes, which are single-AZ resources and cannot be shared across multiple Availability Zones.
2
Evaluate throughput scale and operational characteristics.
The workload exhibits unpredictable spikes up to 2 GB/s2\text{ GB/s}.
Amazon EFS with Elastic throughput is designed specifically for unpredictable workloads, scaling throughput automatically without manual provisioning or management.
3
Select the fully managed solution with the lowest operational overhead.
Amazon EFS meets all structural, performance, and scaling requirements as a managed service.
Setting up custom NFS shares on EC2 instances or attempting to use EBS Multi-Attach across zones either fails to meet the multi-AZ requirement or introduces significant administrative overhead and single points of failure.

Key Concept

Amazon EFS provides managed, shared, elastic-scale file storage across multiple Availability Zones, whereas Amazon EBS volumes are localized to a single Availability Zone and cannot natively serve as multi-AZ shared file systems.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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High-Performing and Scalable Storage Solutions

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